Weekly Wrap Up: And All the Extras

There is no weekly wrap up hosted at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers this week, but she's had some great Homeschooling 101 posts.  So, I'm posting my own weekly wrap up.  Enjoy!

As our children are getting older and older, I'm noticing that we spend more and more time away from home.  When we first began having children, we had this discussion and decided to limit the activities our kids do so that family time doesn't suffer.  We've never let one child have more than one activity at once (except church), but when that is spread four ways, we're still busy.  It's always a struggle to balance all the good and useful activity with the need to be at home as a family (and to budget our finances).

Kathryne is involved in volleyball right now.  She's never played before but is enjoying it quite a bit.  And I'm surprised at how easily she has picked up some things about the sport.

At church, Kathryne is involved in All Access, our middle school group. (Jason and I help with this group.) And, she teaches Cubbies in AWANA on Sunday nights.  She's also continued on in her TREK book for AWANA and has earned her Timothy Award this year.

Charles is playing soccer for a competitive rec league.  It's our first time with this league and it has been a bit of a learning curve for us.  It is much less organized than the church league we've been with.  But the coach has been nice, and I think Charles has learned a lot.

He is also involved in our middle school group at church and sings with the middle school choir- Voices of Devotion.

Ashlyne is our gymnast.  She has just been invited to move up to the competitive team at our gym.  This is a big decision because it involves more money and time.  But, she loves the gym and has quite a bit of skill.  She is also singing in our church choir- along with Rachel- and is doing AWANA- along with Rachel.  She and Rachel both finished their AWANA books, the reviews, and the extra credit books this year.  Last night, they performed in the choir program.

Rachel is only involved at church right now, but this summer she is going to do the summer swim league at the Y.

Despite all this busyness, we are still managing to get out school work done.  We've completely finished up history now and will be finished with Apologia General Science after this week. We will have finished our Bible overview in two weeks.  And Latin is so close to the end also. Literature and math are still taking up our time, but I'll be happy if we head into a summer break with just those things to finish.

This week, we're headed to Great Wolf on Monday just for the day.  It's Big Splash Day!  Then we'll plug along with regular work the rest of the week.

A New Name?

For a number of years, this blog has been called The Courtney Six.  When I began blogging, I wanted a title that would reflect our family.  Since we had our fourth child, we have been affectionately known as "The Courtney Six," so that seemed an appropriate title for our family blog.


But, as my blogging has expanded, I've branched out and began two other blogs.  I'm Livin' My Dream is a personal blog, dedicated to posting about our family, Bible related posts, and random pondering I may indulge in. Its name comes from the trademark phrase that my husband gives me when I complain about my crazy life: "You're livin' your dream!"


I also expanded my blogging to have a blog dedicated solely to books and reading.  Reading is an all consuming for me, and I read all the time.  I've begun reviewing books for several publishers- mostly because of the nice free books I get- and I read and review at Leah's Good Reads.


So this blog has turned into a blog about our homeschooling life.  Because of this, I wanted a new title that would reflect our homeschooling.


People homeschool for many reasons- academic excellence, children with learning differences, avoiding bullying in schools.  None of those are the reason we homeschool.  The main reason we homeschool is because we take seriously God's Words in Deuteronomy:   ⁶ The commandments I give you today must be in your hearts. ⁷ Make sure your children learn them. Talk about them when you are at home. Talk about them when you walk along the road. Speak about them when you go to bed. And speak about them when you get up. ⁸ Write them down and tie them on your hands as a reminder. Also tie them on your foreheads. ⁹ Write them on the doorframes of your houses. Also write them on your gates. 


God wants us to be teaching our children about Him all the time.  I can't think of a better way to do this than to have many, many opportunities to be together and to talk about a Biblical worldview all day.  It's more than teaching Bible every day- although we do that.  It's more than choosing Christian curriculum- although we do that.  It is filtering every day, every thing we teach, everything we learn, everything we talk about through the filter of God's Word and God's plan for our lives.  It's truly why we homeschool.  Right now, in this stage of our lives, this is the way that God has laid on our hearts to accomplish this with our children.


And so the new name: As We Walk Along the Way.  It is my prayer that this is what will happen in our lives, that we will truly be teaching our children the things of God as we walk along the way.


If you're a new follower, welcome.  Enjoy the little tidbits I share about our homeschooling journey.  If you're a regular reader, I hope you like the name change.  Let me know what you think.

Weekly Wrap Up: Life With a Toddler Again

This week (and over the next few weeks) we are keeping a toddler.  This is the baby we once kept full time.  She is now almost three, and she will be staying with us on and off as her dad recovers from surgery.  She is oh so sweet, and my children love having her around.  She keeps us hopping as I remember what life was like with a toddler.

This week we focused on getting school work done with her here.  She really has fallen into the swing of things quite easily, but I do try to get the kids up and working earlier than normal so that we have plenty of time to get our work done with pauses throughout the day.  We also had the Come See Festival, a spring festival, in town this week.  On Saturday, Charles ran in the 5K, and the rest of us ran in the one mile fun run.  On Tuesday, I took all the kids to the library for crafts and to a local garden for lunch and entertainment.

All the kids with the Carolina Panthers mascot, Sir Purr:

Of course, we also accomplished some school work.  We've finished up reading Story of the World Volume 4 for history, and all that remains is for the older kids to write an essay on a topic of their choice from the Modern Age.  We're in Module 15, the next to the last science module in Apologia General Science.  Rachel has finished her math book and will just be doing some "filler" worksheets as we finish the year out.  We've also stopped logic for the year.  We are halfway through Introductory Logic, and I think we are at a good place to stop and pick up again in August.

It is nice this time of year to finish up subjects check them off.  I've also purchased the Olympics Unit from Amanda Bennett to work on this summer.  I like to do a mini unit in the summer, and this will be perfect with the Olympics coming on!

For more weekly wrap ups check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrap Up: Stop and Take a Deep Breath

After a week of almost no extracurricular activities last week, we were off and running this week.  For some reason spring seems to launch us into a very busy season.  Thankfully, we are still finding time to get regular school work done; and I still have high hopes of finishing up in early May.

One of the great things about homeschooling is the ability to adapt and adjust when we need a change.  I have loved our Apologia science book this year.  This is the first time I have used Apologia as a complete science curriculum, and I think it is great.  We've made it through Module 12- out of 16 in the book. The last few modules are about body systems.  When I read through the modules, I saw that they were very, very detailed.  I was quite concerned that we would never be able to keep moving along at the speed we were and still comprehend the material.  I also felt like this should just be an overview, as we would have more in depth study of body systems in biology.  So, I adjusted.  Instead of reading each module, we are watching some videos from Discovery Education about each body system and then going through the study guides from each Apologia module.  I've been very pleased so far with the three body systems we've studied.  The videos I found are informative, and Kathryne and Charles are labeling a diagram of each system as we study it.

Another wonderful thing about homeschooling is the flexibility of our schedule.  The kids' cousins, who go to our church's school, were on spring break this weekend and camping.  On Wednesday, we went out and spent the day at the campground with them.  The cousins played at the lake, hiked around the campground circle, and played at the playground.  It's nice to be able to take off when we'd like and do fun things.

On Tuesday when we finished school, we headed out to our local Children's Attention Home and played with the kids there.  This is something we are going to do on a regular basis, volunteering every other Tuesday to help with homework and play with kids.  I'm very thankful for the opportunity to do a service project as a family.

In extracurricular news, Kathryne played in her first volleyball game last night.  She is enjoying volleyball, and I'm proud of her for trying something new.  She is not a sports person, but she wanted to try this season, and she is leanring quite a bit.

The next few weeks will be a whirlwind (as usual).  We are babysitting for one of our favorite toddlers- the baby I kept a couple of years ago who is now such a big girl at almost three!  We are very excited.  She's been here periodically as her dad has looked for work and done some temporary jobs, but she'll be her a little more regularly the next few weeks.  Again, I 'm thankful for the flexibility of homeschooling.  We can adapt and adjust, so we can keep right on with school but still get to play with our girl.

For more weekly wrap ups, check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrap Up: Spring Break?

Local schools had their spring break this week.  I declined to take a spring break because I'm trying to finish up school sooner.  But, we did do more fun and less school "work" this week.

Monday: I thought I had a meeting to volunteer at our local Children's Attention Home, a shelter for abused/abandoned children.  So, I left the kids with assignments and went out Monday morning.  As it turns out, I didn't need this meeting because I have volunteered there before.  So, the kids got a bit of a break, and we did less school work when I came home.  We are going to begin volunteering at the home every other week  helping with homework and playing with kids.

Tuesday: We took a field trip to a local missions support center- JAARS.  JAARS provides support services for missionaries working around the world.  It is linked with Wycliffe missions, a mission focused on Bible translation.  And it's only about 40 minutes from our house.  Along with other homeschoolers, we got a great look at Bible translation, JAARS's airplanes and airport, the Alphabet museum (showing the origination of languages and the work of translation), and a Mexico museum (featuring handcrafts from Mexico).

Wednesday: I had another appointment, this one with the dermatologist.  Again, the kids had a lightened school day by the time I returned.  But, we are making good progress in completing things we need to complete.

Thursday: We slept a little later because Jason was off work.  Then we did a small amount of school work and headed out to the river to play and picnic with other homeschoolers from our church.  The weather turned out to be perfect.

Friday: We had a more "normal" day but still ended up with lighter work because we took food for a library appreciation day and stayed to pick out some library books.

This weekend will be filled with Easter celebrating followed by another busy week next week.  It seems that the older my children get, the more those weeks seem to be!

For more weekly wrap ups, check out Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.