First Official Week of Wellington Florida Homeschool for our 34th Year of Homeschool!

Kick-Off for the first week of Wellington Florida Homeschool for the year 2013-2014! 

Last week was our first complete week of homeschool for the new school year. We homeschool all year round but each year around the time the other kids go back to public and private school, we create a new adventure or two with our homeschool journey.

This year we were very excited that 3 other families in our church started to homeschool. Now there are about 5 families in our ward that homeschool.

Three of the families have sons close to our son's age so we know this is going to be a fun year!

We started a co-op with one of the families and Monday was our first day working together. Boy, it was FUN!!! 

I am SO excited to be teaching Ancient History and Cultures. We are using Mystery of History Volume 1- The Creation to the Resurrection. I LOVE this curriculum. This is the best Christian worldview curriculum that I have found. I have a veteran homeschooling mom of 34 years so I have witnessed and tried many curriculum throughout the years.

We created this course ( we added some other resources) as a high school level course with 3 of the kids in the co-op using this course for high school credit including our 10 year old. Well, he just turned 11 this week.

Here are the kids in our co-op showing off their new animals they just invented. As Adam was given the task of naming all the animals, we challenged the kids to create their own animal and then invent a name for their animal.

I wanted to make sure that the kids all understand that there are other views out there. So I added the Connect The Thoughts Ancient History course to add some worldview and secular views to the course.  Then we added the LDS Church's Institute Manual on the Old Testament to round it out with our Church's worldview.

Once a week the kids all go together to CHAA - Christian Homeschool Athletic Association - the kids call it SAINTS for short. Here they learn all the different sports and learn to play on teams and with other kids. They get to go for half a day or a full day. If you want a great PE program for your homeschoolers - you will love this program for your kids! Here is their website so you can sign up and find out where your park is located: http://chaasaints.org/  They even started a SAINTS program in Africa!

We have a lot of other great news to share along our homeschool journey. 

On another day of the week- we co-op together for Spanish, Music, Art, Math, Root Words and games. On that day- the kids get to go swimming for an hour and then eat lunch before we start the afternoon sessions. What a way to enjoy your lunch!!!

If you are thinking about pulling your kids out of public school this year- there is a ton of support for you here in Wellington Florida and the rest of South Florida. Florida is the second best state to homeschool your kids. You don't have to do testing if you don't want to. You can follow any curriculum you want to, even unschooling. Reach out to any of us homeschoolers- we are happy to help you learn more about homeschooling.

Another homeschool mom shared this saying with me that she found on a homeschooling blog:
"If you send your kids off to Caesars' schools, don't be surprised if they come home as Romans."

Happy new year!!

We're starting off the new year 2013 doing a mixture of fourth-grade work sixth-grade work, some middle school and high school and some preppy college work.

I just spent the last few days taking off from work and homeschool to gather up all of our thoughts are bookwork and all the different things that we need to get done this next semester. I spent a couple of days putting everything in order organizing the bookshelves and all of the schoolwork area. It feels really good to have everything nice clean clear of clutter.

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Location:Florida

Daily Physical Education in Homeshool

Our son is a baseball player. At the age of almost 8 years old he walked up to dad and told him that he was going to be a pro baseball player when he grows up. When he made this announcement he had not touched a baseball bat or a glove.

Well now he is 10 years old and is the star pitcher on our Little League team, travel team, All Stars and International Allstars!

So we don't have a lack of physical education opportunities.

At home every day for an hour we do:

Agility training
Integrated Flexibility
Wall Drill ( pitching stance)
Progressive Drill ( pitching stance)
Rotator Cuff Program
Body Work Routine
Core Stabilization
Run on treadmill for one mile at 60%

That is what we do daily at home.

Then he has baseball practice at least 4 times a week on the field.

Before or after practice he does his Throwing routine.

He has a major league baseball player who is his personal coach where dad takes him once a week to work on his batting and pitching.

On alternating days he does pull ups and sit ups, and other drills for leg strengthening.

Then he has baseball games at least once a week. Currently he is playing on two teams.

Once a week for a half day he goes to SAINTS. Christian Homeschool Athletic Association.
There he gets to play all the sports. They go through in a years time, all the different sports.

Monday is the start of a new week

I like Mondays. Mondays feel refreshing. The start of a new week unfolding.

I wake up at 6 a.m on Mondays in order to get all my business work done before 10 a.m. I work until Tristan wakes up.

Then we do our chores. I make him breakfast and he does his chores.

Baseball exercises, stretching, conditioning and strengthening is next.

Then it is our Math U See Math book and curriculum. Math U See is the best math curriculum for boys who are hands on learners. I even learn from Math U See.

Practice our times tables - to know them without thinking about them.

We also like, Life of Fred, math books. We read a chapter each day during the weekdays.

Starting again...

Well, that did not turn out that well:)
I started this blog to keep our records for homeschool in order and posting our progress.
But life got super busy again.

Baseball playoffs are taking up most of our time and when I get home from games I am just too tired to do anything but make and eat dinner and then go to sleep.

Everyday there is baseball and more baseball:) so at least we can report that we are certainly keeping up with P.E. classes for homeschool!

Yes, we did do all our academics as well.

I will try again!

Fridays are Family Day around here!

October 19, 2012 - Fridays are fun and more relaxed than our other days of the week. One of our grown daughters has two children, a three year old boy soon to be four and a brand new baby who is 12 weeks old.  She brings her children, our grandchildren, over on Fridays.

Tristan ( our ten year old) is so excited each Friday to play with his nephews. He loves babies. When the baby is here, he holds him and takes care of him. I don't pressure him much about school work on Fridays because it is important to know and understand how to live in the real world outside of academia.

Today he took care of the baby. That right there is life school! He knows how to hold a baby, walk around with a baby and entertain a baby. He loves to hug the baby.

He told me today that no one should be able to kill a baby ( abortion) because the babies deserve to live and they are so cute.

Then he and the three year old played war, army, knights and all that male dominance stuff:). They get so creative. Tristan dresses up in these amazingly creative costumes and then packs himself up with toy guns, the nerf weapons and really nice and sturdy swords.

So today was a great family fun day.

• family relations
• baby care
• family prayer 
• creative play
• drama class: costuming, wardrobe, role playing, directing, action skits 
• minecraft videos- watched minecraft videos
• minecraft- play minecraft game on computer 
• family chores- garbage out, water plants, recycling out to bins
• baseball exercises 
• baseball practice 
• strengthening exercises, flexibility, running 1 mile 
• prepared his own hotdog for lunch 
• practice tennis outside with nephew  

Our Florida Homeschool Journey

In Florida in our county we have to keep a log of our homeschooling just in case the school district comes knocking on our door! We would have to be able to show them that we have a daily agenda for homeschool.

We homeschooled 5 children all the way to adulthood. Now we have our miracle baby who is now 10 years old. He is also being homeschooled.

So this is our journey. 

I will do my best to report in on a daily basis or at least a few times a week to list the agenda and what we accomplished each day.

We believe in a lot of unschooling and child directed schooling along with some unit studies and practical subjects that knowing our son, he would never want to partake in :)