Our First Day Back

Our first day back to homeschooling went well.

I had bloodwork at 9:00am and, since we go bowling at 10:00 am on Tuesday mornings, I packed reading, math, language arts and handwriting in Caleb's backpack and brought it with us. Once my bloodwork was done we had 45 minutes to spare. So we drove down and parked at the lake shore and went over some of his work. He read a story and we also looked over his language arts for today & tomorrow. We finished up the other things when we got home.

All in all a relaxed day. :o)

Now, since I didn't get much sleep last night, I am off to see if I can get rested up.

Insomnia Is No Fun :o(

Well it is 3:26AM here and I can't sleep!!! Ugh!

Thankfully this doesn't happen often.

I know I am tired and I will be exhausted tomorrow, but I just can't sleep. :o( Surfing the net probably isn't doing alot to make me sleepy. lol ;o)

There's no sleeping in for me either as I have blood work in the morning.

Long Weekend Happenings

The long weekend didn't seem to be so long. lol ;o) We didn't go anywhere, just stuck close to home.

I knew my mom and aunt were coming out for a visit today so I tried to get plenty done yesterday. I changed and washed all the bedding, made a batch of cookies, a double batch of biscuits and we froze some more of our corn for winter.

Also, yesterday, I finally got around to making homemade liquid laundry soap. Ann at His Grace to Me shared a link a while back for a recipe to make homemade liquid laundry soap. I had bought all of the ingredients this summer, and since it looked like I might run out of soap after my laundry-a-thon, I decided that it would be a good time to give it a try.

Caleb grated the bar of soap for me. :o)


Here is the finished product.


I used some of it today and shared some with both my mom & aunt.

Tomorrow is our first day back to homeschooling, so I'd better get some sleep. :o)

A Work in Progress

Well I've been working to put together a portfolio of some kind to organize Caleb's school work. Let me just say, straight from the get go, I have no clue about any of this. ;o) I have searched the internet and found some lists and suggestions, but nothing that included step by step instructions, so I am just winging it. lol ;o)

So far this is what I have come up with.

We found a lime green 1.5" binder. Just the color Caleb wanted. It has clear plastic on the front, back and side. I made a cover for the front. Sorry for the glaring picture, but it is the plastic reflecting the light.


I didn't realize it until we got home, but the binder also has pouches on the inside of the front and back covers. I thought this would be a good place to store important homeschool paperwork, like our application to the Dept. of Education. When we recieve our letter of approval back from the Minister of Education, then I will hole punch it and put it in the very front.

I used several (and I do mean several!) packages of subject dividers to keep each section by itself. So far the sections include..........weekly lesson plans, math outline, reading outline, grammar outline, math work samples, reading work samples, grammar work samples, library book list, media list (DVD, TV, Internet, Computer), reading list, handwriting samples, photos(in page protectors), field trips. And that is just to name a few. lol ;o)


This is a sample of the weekly lesson plan. I have the days listed across the top, and the subjects are listed down the side. I forgot to take a picture of the back, but it has the days listed and a spot to list chores, life skills, field trips, outings and outreach. Each month I will use a different color for the weekly pages. This month will be yellow, next month will be orange.....and so on. That will make it easy to find the month that I am looking for.


As I mentioned, I have lists to keep record of library books borrowed, media used (TV, Internet, computer, DVDs etc) and books read. I decided that these would get bright colored pages too! :o)


I'm still not 100% sure where I want each section to go just yet, so I have not labeled the dividers. So far, I have just used mini sticky notes to mark each tab. As I figure out where I want each one and in what order I want them then I will label them. For example, I thought I would have the math outline in one section and the math work samples in another section. Then I got thinking that they could be in the same section and I would print the outline on different colored paper so it would stand out from the samples.


So, as you can see, this is still very much a work in progress. I am glad that it is somewhat organized. That will make it easier to gather the samples as we go along and not have to try at the end of the year to pull it all together.

Now I just hope a 1.5" binder will hold it all!! :o)