Family “Closet” In Progress

When we moved here last spring, my bright idea was to keep all the kids clothing in the basement where we had two clothes rods and a large folding table right next to the washer and dryer. This worked out until we found two dressers at the curb on trash day (in good condition) so we picked them up and brought their clothes to their rooms, one dresser went in each room. Because the house is so small, I wanted to keep their closets free for toys and storage. It was nice having their clothes up in their own rooms, but laundry folding day really took a lot out of me having to lug 2-4 overflowing laundry baskets up the stairs. And keeping those clothes nicely folded in the drawers was not turning out so great.

So now I have decided to bring the kids clothes back downstairs and their dressers. All the clothing will be hung again, and the drawers will be storing their underthings, slippers, accessories, etc. There will be no more lugging heavy laundry baskets (a good thing, considering I’m pregnant and will be developing a belly in the next few months), and the clothing can go right onto hangers or into drawers right there, with no traveling required. There is a bathroom in the basement so the kids can get dressed for the day right there.

This frees up a considerable amount of space in their bedrooms, so I hope we can find some nifty storage devices to make their toys more easily accessible. The extra space will be helpful when we have to add another bed to one of the rooms, too!

And yes, even though I call this the family closet, my husband and I keep all of our clothing in our bedroom. But we don’t dirty nearly as many clothes as the kids, so I might carry up a laundry basket half full once a week or so.

All of the off-season clothing that still fits our kids hangs on a separate rack right across the area so it’s still available and easy to get to when the season changes.

Do you see what I see?

Do you see what I see? Yes, that is the proof that baby #5 is on it’s way! We are so happy to be called to God’s service again, to train up another child for His glory. Nothing makes me happier than loving my husband, training and loving my children, and tending to my home. Our children are sooo excited for another baby and I’m having constant images bounce about in my head about how will we handle different situations - we need a larger van as we will outgrow our current ride by the time this baby arrives - there is no room for another carseat! So we are looking into passenger vans. Then there is the issue of shopping with so many young children. We will have 5 children, ages 6 and under. We shop at Meijers for non-bulk items because they have carts that can seat three at a time but I think a recent trip to Kroger revealed a cart that would sit four. We may be changing stores. We always shop at Sam’s for bulk items and that won’t change. I always take the kids with me - I have their entire lives and that won’t change either. I think it’s fun to shop with the kids, and it leads to many learning opportunities. And, I hope, shows them how to purchase wisely and not impulse buy. We always discuss what we’re buying and why, and why we don’t buy many pre-packaged goods (everything we eat is made from scratch, 95% of the time) but how we can make them at home. If the kids see something that looks good, but the ingredient list doesn’t, I take the idea home and try to find a recipe online and tweak it if necessary.

Early on, I always wear our babies in a sling or wrap. I never lug that heavy baby bucket around! But once the baby is interested in his or her surroundings and can sit up, I like to let them sit in the cart and take everything in. I am thinking about bedroom arrangements, and where to store clothing, and how will I manage this, or handle that. I’m asking experienced moms how they handle the situations I question and begin gathering my “arsenal” of ideas early.

Before our move, I got rid of almost all of our baby clothes! My youngest was about 6 months at the time, so 0-6 months went out the door to people in need and the local church that gave out clothing to needy families. I saved my absolute favorite outfits and gave them to my daughter for her baby dolls (and she has graciously given them back LOL). I have faith that God will provide our needs - garage sales are coming up this summer and we can still garage sale after the birth of the baby when we know if it’s a girl or boy. Until then I’ll be picking up both genders of clothing if I can find good deals, and get a lot of gender neutral stuff to get us by. Luckily 6mo+ I did save - we hand all of our childrens clothing down the line of kids and I used to save the baby clothes for future babies, if we were ever blessed again, but with a move coming up I didn’t want to move them when I know how easy baby clothes are to come by. We literally purged about 1/2-3/4 of our belongings, going from a large house down to a small one. It was WONDERFUL!

I don’t have much time to write more, but I have a lot of posts in progress here dealing with issues I face as the mother of closely spaced children and hopefully I can finish them and start posting them. Until then, what were your biggest challenges and how did you handle them? What are your biggest challenges now? What are the biggest rewards of having closely spaced children? As a Christian parent, how do you fulfill your role to train your children and teach them about God?

I’m currently wrapped up in the beatitudes which are beautiful and inspiring to read, but really are pointing out my faults. This is wonderful, however, because I am in a period of my life where I feel ready to change, and move on to the next level, whatever that is, as a Christian. I feel the change coming on, something that will change me into a better person than I was before. The beatitudes may be the key, showing me what I need to fix, and how to address it.

Math for a k/1st grader

For my 5 year old, she’s doing first grade level math. I was creating my own math schedule for her and when it came to a few issues I had with what to teach when and how, I decided to scope out an actual math curriculum for her to put my mind at ease. She was counting by 5’s and 10’s, counting change, could count to 100 by 1’s, 5’s, 10’s and began telling time but I began wondering if I was teaching things in a way that would make sense when we got to bigger coins, dollar amounts, etc. I didn’t want to hop around and backtrack, and didn’t feel I had a very concrete path to follow

For math, I chose to purchase the Saxon 1 Teachers Guide. I have found the worksheets super easy to duplicate myself based off the teachers guide (Which has pictures of the worksheets for each lesson and answers written in). I usually hand write the lessons on a piece of stationary or scrap paper and my daughter fills them in. I also find the worksheets incredibly repetitive, which could be a good thing if most of this wasn’t review for her so I combine both of the days worksheets into one and omit the basic stuff she already knows to prevent boredom. I chose to start the book from the beginning, rather than try to find where she’d fit in, because there are a lot of concepts explained differently and some things I felt she needed to review on, so instead of skipping it all we’re starting from the beginning and moving forward that way. Plus I find the book is set up like a stepping-stone path to the more advanced stuff and I feel more comfortable going lesson by lesson so she can understand the basic concepts, the way the book describes them, so she can connect more easily with the advanced stuff later in the book.

I enjoy that the curriculum is set up with a script, so that I can explain things more clearly if I need help with a concept. I also enjoy that it hits on a variety of skills too - calendar reading and weather graphing are daily encounters and the book also brings in fun objects - like blocks (I use blocks instead of purchasing the stacking towers, balls instead of apples, etc. and will improvise other teaching aids as needed), stuffed animals and more fun stuff.

I’ll likely stay with Saxon because I can see it working well with my son when he is ready for it, and I plan on purchasing teachers editions for each grade except for Kindergarten as I hear it’s very basic and we have plenty of very basic resources. Maybe I can continue to recreate the worksheets on my own instead of purchasing a new workbook for each child (probably recreate them easily on the computer too and save the files so I can reuse them on each child), and teach out of teachers guides exclusively. I enjoy having a script available to help me explain concepts!

Life has been a flurry of activity lately.

Since switching to a classical curriculum, my daughter has shot ahead in her schooling. At some point I’ll post the kids’ curriculums and how we do things. I am still schooling my oldest son who is 4, but he’s in a pre-k curriculum focusing mainly on letters and some math, plus our regular bible time. I’m putting an end to my monthly newsletter that focused on making and cooking things from scratch. I need more time to run my household, finish working on other business projects, plan our homeschooling, etc. and all of the time I need for that was directed at the newsletter. After discussing this with my husband we agreed it was consuming too much of my time. I have a few books I’d like to finish and publish, and will continue to post recipes and how-to’s on my scratch cooking blog and homesteading blog as time becomes available.

In other news, my husband has been heavily involved in our community’s emergency response team and he is in training to become a pastor and help run a nursing home/hospital ministry! I’m so excited for him. He is a great leader, very compassionate, and has a big heart for the elderly especially those in a nursing home and for the sick in the hospital. His training and the ministry he’s involved with has provided some neat opportunities for our children to do a few things, like help me stuff Christmas envelopes (I’m signing the cards for the ministry), and draw Christmas pictures on a few Christmas cards that require a picture of some sort. We’ll be packing goodie bags that will be given to nursing home residents and might even help pass them out if we’re all available. The senior pastor of the ministry is referring to me as the new administration I’ve created new business cards and am writing their newsletter - though their newsletter is only a few pages compared to 30+ on the newsletter I did for my business!

Yesterday I got my upper wisdom teeth removed, as they were impacted. Recovery is going about as well as you can expect it to, though my gums and teeth are still too tender to chew even soft foods. My foods are limited to meal-replacement shakes, yogurt, cream of wheat or coco wheats, butternut squash and other foods that don’t require me to chew! The kids have all been great to help me.

Well, January is the last issue of my newsletter. Back issues will be available for purchase if you’re interested in them. But after the new year I’ll have more time to blog about the issues surrounding closely spaced children. I have a lot of ideas - just never had the time available to write them.

Trying to become more organized…

When my husband sold his truck, I splurged on a nice Franklin Covey planner. I originally “settled” for a lower cost planner but it just wasn’t what I wanted - the rings were too small to add any of my own pages (and I had to create most of my pages and forms to suit my personal needs, so needed to add quite a bit additional paper), and it didn’t zip closed (which is a plus for me, so I don’t loose loose paperwork). This one zips and has a shoulder strap so it’s become my new purse.

It came with tabbed monthly and a-z dividers and a notepad. Perfect!

I used some templates from the DIY planner site, then created the rest myself. The main tabs are: household, financial, homeschool, business, bible, family, and meals/food. I created the dividers with cardstock and taped the label on the end, and they stagger so you can see each label when the binder is open.

To further organize myself, I added “subtabs” if you will, this time with the tab being at the top of the page. These tabs divided each main tab listed above.

My “household” tab has a cleaning and resources subtab. Here I keep lists of my rooms/zones, and the tasks I do on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis, along with a little list of things I’d like to change or improve in that room, over time. Resources tab is for books, websites, blogs or businesses that strike my fancy on a homekeeping level.

My financial tab is further divided with budget, bills, debts (non-utility/non-monthly bills), and costs to consider (for example, my budget has room for “household” expenses. to keep me figure projected expenses I am listing any household expense I can think of so that I can skim over the list each month and figure what needs to be purchased that month, if anything, and give me time to shop around for the best deal.). I also have a list of things we’d like to buy.

My family tab is a work in progress, but I’d like to include everyones sizes, fav. colors, likes, and gift lists so I can add/change lists through the year and be prepared to buy the best gifts for them as birthdays or holidays approach. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve shopped last minute for my kids and entered a toystore only to ask myself… what is it they REALLY want? being bombarded by so many toys, at the very last minute, feeling pressured to buy something, left me thinking I could do so much better. Now I have a running list - if they play with a toy at a friends and really enjoy it, or really enjoy toys they have now that I can add on to (tinker toys, train sets), or if I come across a toy I think they’d really enjoy, I write it down so when a birthday or holiday comes along I’m prepared with a list for each child and am not left stranded trying to remember the name of a special toy or trying to make a decision on the best toy amidst hundreds. In addition, I’d like to include a list of milestones for each child, basic health info, a running list of activities they enjoy for babysitters, babysitter info, etc.

The bible tab has a checklist for reading the bible in a year, reminders about prayer or Christian conduct, and has tabs for my prayer journal, and includes articles I find encouraging for Christian mothers, wives and women.

My homeschooling tab is still a work in process as I decide how detail oriented I want to be. So far it has a sub tab for my schedule, which is a form that is filled out for weekly assignments/projects/fieldtrips/ideas. thn I have a sub tab for children (with a detailed description of what we’re doing now and short term goals. this will probably be updated quarterly and old descriptions filed), journal (daily happenings), curriculum (books/resources we own, so whn I’m planning a unit study or project I can make sure we make use of the resources we already have here at home), 1001 books (a list for classical education, 1001 books to read), resources and ideas (a list of blogs, websites, books, resources I find inspiring, as well as ideas written down for tackling subjects - I have a few math games I’ve written down to use in future lessons). I also have subtabs for scope (state requirements per grade/subject), and goals.

My business tab is divided into projects (to take notes on upcoming Living From Scratch newsletters, or new books/curriculum/handouts to create), goals, topics (a list of topics for each monthly column plus special articles… I’m always getting ideas for future articles and need a place to contain them), topic planner (helps me put together my articles), publications planner (for publications in the works).

My food/meals tab is a work in progress and will likely take a few weeks to complete. I hate not having a plan for meals, and having to wonder what to make for each meal only to figure out a meal but forget it requires presoaking or other steps that take a long time…. So needless to say, I have a weekly meal plan subtab. This not only helps me plan 3 meals per day, but also has sections for food that must be used this week before it goes bad, goals in the kitchen (snacks or new recipes I want to try, reorganization, etc.), food for the freezer to make, food for the pantry to make, and new recipes to try. After this, I hjav a master grocery list tab, that lists the food we typically buy and from where. This will probably turn into a pricebook as I not prices and sizes for most commonly purchased items to make sure we’re really getting the best deals. I also have a master cookbook tab. No, my master cookbook will not be stored in here (it currently takes up almost an entire milk crate…), but the names of my recipes will reside here. This will help meal planning go a little easier. I have a sub-tab for my food inventory (both deep freezers, the fridge and my pantry/kitchen room downstairs), and a “to try” tab for recipes to try - I’ll jot down books/page numbers, websites, etc. and have these on hand for when the mood strikes to try a new food.

I keep a day keeper to keep me on track with my daily happenings and it also has a section for misc. “to dos” and lists. I jot down the little things I want to get done that day and check them off as I finish them. If I don’t finish them, I transfer them to the next day if they’re important enough. I also have a sheet for each week that highlights major happenings during the week and things I want to accomplish at some point that week.

The dividers that cam with the planner have a spot on the monthly tabs to write down important days - birthdays, anniversaries, etc. As I use it and pinpoint more needs, I’ll change the planner as I see fit.

Sometime soon i’ll be transferring my contact list from my cell phone into my planner because I hate relying on electronics. I feel so much less stress being able to write all the little things on my mind down so I don’t forget them, and the binder is big enough not to get lost but is still portable. I’ve always had a household notebook I never opened because it was too big. I wanted something portable, so if I think of something for it, I have it to write it down in. This is my new brain, and I’m really enjoying it. I really enjoy that the forms are made from scratch so they reflect my own needs. I am thinking of making them available to others who have the 8.5×5.5 planners though because in my searches it has become very apparent that planner pages of that size are incredibly hard to come by…

A new idea for the morning, and a homeschool toolbar

first, I wanted to share with you a great new find I found tonight when I was supposed to be working on my monthly newsletter. . A toolbar for the internet, geared for homeschoolers. I installed it, and I love it. It comes preloaded with blogs, forums, websites that you can check out, and add too. Also radio stations ready to play, local weather, charts, and lots more. I’m thrilled!!

While surfing around on a homeschool carnival online, I came across this blog article explaining how a box full of simple activities can keep kids on gear before homeschooling begins. She explains that if her children have time to play, watch tv or hop on the internet before homeschooling begins, it’s hard to settle them for learning. I have the same experience! I feed breakfast then quickly we run downstairs to school before their mind gets on other things. I think that using this idea with the box will allow for perhaps a bit more time to prepare and clean up after breakfast so my mind is on school and not on those dirty dishes waiting for me upstairs.

If I keep some “brain” activities in this box - perhaps some farm animals, a memory game, tangrams, building blocks, leggos, crayons and a picture to color, worksheets of some sort, misc. items I’ve saved from the garbage (that the kids will be able to use in their play, no doubt), perhaps some crafty stuff, it’ll make our mornings go a bit more relaxed… Stuff that will engage them and keep their mind focused on being used so they’re ready to do school after breakfast. Stuff that can be changed from one box to another on a regular basis so they don’t get bored with the contents.. Hmmm, possibilities!

These could even work for car rides, waiting at appointments, etc.

Board Games & Card Games for Education

Recently our educational preference took a turn for the classical, but more on that later. I’ve been homeschooling for the past year and a half, you think I’d have all of this together by now, right? But honestly the past year and a half have been pretty unstructured and fun as I brought my oldest up through the bare basics. Now that we’re doing “real school” I’ve paid a lot more attention to the books we use, our goals, our structure, and our scheduling. We’re still working out the bugs, and I expect to be for the next few years as the younger two will becoming of school age and we’ll have to find our groove each time we add a new child to the schedule. But, more on that later.

As a part of our schooling, I’ve decided to incorporate board and card games right into the curriculum. So far we own Chutes & Ladders, a deck of cards, Go fish (both the card version and the fishing pole/cardboard fish version), Candyland, Monopoly, Elefun, Yahtzee (made up our own game), Scrabble Jr (not using this yet), Uno, and a few others. For Christmas, I hope to add more games to our collection that will enhance our kids education. I’m told anything with dice is great to work on math skills. Games can so easily be modified and new games created out of old board games.

A good example about how games can be modified would be in the case of Yahtzee. The kids are simply too young to understand how the game is really placed, but with all those dice a math game can easily be created. Each of us roll the dice, my oldest and youngest work on adding all the dots and my oldest writes down all the numbers. Whoever had the highest score at the end of the game gets a chip. Whoever has the most chips at the end of 6 games wins.

There are plenty of games you can create and play with a plain old deck of cards. A game I look forward to playing with my two oldest is War. Eventually we’ll play by the sum of two cards and eventually work into subtraction and multiplication.

You can create your own board game and rules out of a file folder or a piece of cardboard. There are books available with pages you can photocopy and paste into a file folder making an instant file folder game. Memory can be played in a huge variety of ways from the traditional picture matching, to matching upper and lowercase letters, to creating words, and beyond.

Games are an endless, painless way to reinforce and teach new math (or other subjects as well) skills. They beat boring worksheets and give a break to drilling of math facts.

Do you use board or card games in your learning? What are your favorites and what age/grade level are your children? Have you modified games, or created your own? I’d love to hear from you.

Learning about Creation

I recently began a fun study of creation that will end with a trip to the Creation Museum in KY once we’re all done. Ideally the trip will conclude our creation study and be a springboard for our next few lessons considering how many neat exhibit are there.

With each day the Lord has created, I am trying to tie in a lot of learning activities over the span of a week or more that are related to that day of creation. For example, day one of creation has included a study about the sun, shadows, telling time, rotation/revolution of the earth, night/day. My son is creating a Creation quilt out of paper and my daughter is notebooking her way through the activities. Each day my son will draw a picture or do some sort of artwork on a piece of paper that will be stapled with the others and it’ll go up on the wall. My daughter is doing similar projects but in a notebook that we can flip through. While the lessons are formed mainly for my daughter (doing some K/mostly 1st grade stuff) my son (preschool) is learning right along with her.

Here are some snapshots of our 1st Creation Day Activities

Pictures from our canning season

I still do not have a final count on canning this year, maybe tonight I’ll go count! I know 4 doz. quarts of potatoes so far and 44 quarts of pears. then tons of apple pie filling, apple slices, sauce and about 13 quarts of tomato sauce.

Added a new pup to the family

Our new puppy loves to burrow in the pillows

Meet Callie, our 5 week old English setter x Labrador retriever mix. we visited the waterfowl tournament and somehow ended up coming home with a puppy. Since putting our Vizsla down in July we’ve been saving up a bit of money to buy another puppy when the time was right. So, she is our new addition. While her main purpose is to be a well-trained, enjoyable family dog her “job” is going to be duck hunting and possibly trials. I’m not sure how many “jobs” she can do, but I’d like to also use her for agility - but that will come after, if ever, her initial training as a retriever. We’re new to the whole duck dog thing, but being of the DIY variety, we’ve rented books, dvd’s from the library, I am purchasing one of the books we borrowed that seems fantastic, I’m scouring the internet and picking brains so we do this the right way. Training a duck dog is different than training a regular dog, so it’s new to the both of us.

Our two year old is so sweet with the puppy!

Somehow I’ve also helped my just-turned two year old learn to use the potty and she’ been without a diaper during the day for the past three days. The housebreaking of the puppy is going smoothly, and with the kids so anxious to play with her I’m never without someone willing to take her outside to potty frequently.

I look forward to helping mold her into a well-behaved, versatile family member… One with a job that suits her breed and will contribute to the running of the household (helping my husband stock our freezer with his limit of ducks, of course!). One that will grow old with the kids and be the family dog we’ve never really had. Our two Maltese are quite cute, but not really up to regular long walks or agility or anything than just yapping and looking pretty. Our Vizsla came along years before the children did, so he wasn’t prepared to be the good old family dog in the right way and more or less just tolerated the kids instead of enjoyed them. He was a good, loyal dog and would play with them though. At least the puppy can grow up with our kids who are in much of the same way of similar maturity levels, and this gives my husband and I a new hobby - learning about duck dogs and how to train them. I might even have to get out there with my husband and hunt to see our new project in action - probably in a year or two.