A New Beginning...

   

     Many of us tend to use the start of a New Year to change things we didn't like last year.  Improve, adjust, add.  I am one of those people who love a blank slate, a fresh start.  But all too often, I find I put too much on myself all at once.  I want to change everything on January 1.

     It is insanely stressful and unrealistic when I do that.  Budget, eat completely clean, focus on the kids, minimize internet, be an amazing homeschool mom, keep a spotless house, organize every room floor to ceiling, clean out the basement... the list goes on.

     Not this year.  This year I decided to take things in chunks.  In January I am going to focus on our rhythm (home and school), and budgeting.

January Goals:

• Create a school rhythm, and work home into it.
• Create a budget.
• Make a reasonable plan for sticking to the budget.
• Only eat out for pizza night and the occasional spur of the moment meal. (Note:  Occasional is not every day...)
• Work on my will

     Yes, I'd love to start eating clean, lose weight, take care of myself, and all those wonderful things.  But trying to create an entirely new menu of healthy meals and still stick to a budget and not stress myself out just isn't going to happen.  Instead I am going to start with meals I know, easy meals that will ensure my success.  Then, once I start feeling comfortable (or when I get an itch to try something on pinterest) I will add in a new recipe.

     That is the plan!  Happy New Year!

Playsilk Parachute

This is why I love my husband.  Okay, I love him for a million reasons, but his creativity and engineering nature is fantastic for homeschooling.

I can't remember what I was doing, or where I was, but he was left with the big girls for a while.  When I came home, he had created this really cool parachute from a playsilk (we dyed our own from Dharma Trading), yarn, clothes pins, and an empty peanut butter container.

Overall picture

He had drilled 8 holes in the lid (2 for each string), but after a few rounds, realized one central hole (or, two holes, I suppose) is better.  4 locations seems to tangle too much

He just drilled a hole in one side of the clothes pin for the yarn.  

This works best if you have a nice high deck to throw off of.  Luckily, we do.  ;)

They tried several different methods, from scrunching it all up and letting it go, to lengthening.  I think holding it out like Jujubee is doing worked best.  

And let it fly!  

You may notice there is a stuffed orange inside the jar.  It seemed to help when we added a little weight.  Too much weight made it sink too fast, too little didn't give it enough oompf to spread out and fly.  

There you go!  A parachute from a playsilk.  Have fun!

2013/2014 Waldorf Homeschool Planner

It is complete!  I worked so hard to make a beautiful, simple, easy to use homeschool planner for myself (and others!) and here it is.

I love the artwork.  I made sure to change the graphics by season.  It is for sale at http://hyenacart.com/stores/nikkislittlehouse/ for an intro price of $15, which will change to $25. (and free bonus pages/forms coming soon if you purchase by October 31, 2013)  It includes 138 gorgeous pages of planning fun.  Lots of room for yearly, weekly and monthly planning.  Places for rhythm, form drawing, festival planning, notes, meal planning and more!

Sample of weekly lesson planning pages with each day colored with the Waldorf "color of the day"

Sample of monthly planning page with seasonal graphics

 Sample of 2013 planning pages with space for rhythm, notes, materials, etc

I am just in love with it, and I hope you like it, too!  Let me know if you have any questions, comments or suggestions!  ourjourney at blogspot dot com

Feel free to follow me on facebook as well!  

https://www.facebook.com/journeythroughlove

First day of school 2013

Our first day of school was September 16th.  Jujubee is 8 and in third grade (Waldorf 2), Cocobear is 4 and considered "preschool".

The gnomes joined us for our first day.  

Our art center and nature corner

I put our work for the week in these boxes so I have all the supplies ready to go.  They are labeled by day.   The two large boxes are for overflow, or any extra items.

Not much on our nature table yet. Our seashells from vacation, and pine cones from Mamaw's house.

I realized the night before we didn't have a calendar.  So, I made my own!

Our form of the week

Jujubee decorating her main lesson book cover pages.

Kaybug likes homeschool, too!

Cocobear checking out her hints for story time (We read the sheep and the pig)

Jujubee walking her form

Overall, the first day was fantastic.  Pretty surprising considering we just got back from vacation the day before!  But since we were already starting later than usual, I didn't want to waste any more time.  The year is looking good!

Our final curriculum decision for 2013/2014

I thought I had it all figured out.  Oak Meadow 3 for our main curriculum and Waldorf Essentials 2 for our supplementing.  Then I got Oak Meadow 3 in and decided I'd rather go ahead and use grade 2 stories, so I sent it back and was able to snag a used grade 2 copy.

I tried and tried to make OM2 work as our main, but it was just too much going on at once for us.  We really enjoy the Waldorf approach to learning, and with OM, though it is gentle and art focused, there are so many stories going on at once. A social studies story, science story, a reader, a language arts story.  I attempted to make it into a block schedule like traditional Waldorf - still a no go.

Finally, I decided if it isn't broke, don't fix it.  We are using Waldorf Essentials 2 as our main curriculum, and adding in a few aspects of OM2.  So far, it is working nicely.  Jujubee really enjoys the OM reader - Ben and Meg, and we are using "Beginning Recorder" from OM as well.  When we come across a fun activity from the OM2 science, language, or social studies we throw that in if we have time, but basically we are using WE2.

Here is our school rhythm:

Monday:
Form drawing
Read a story
Model from story
Recorder
Read aloud from reader
Write in journal (I provide writing idea)

Tuesday:
Recall story
Draw and summarize in MLB
Math review during circle time
knit

Wednesday:
Story
Watercolor from story
recorder
Read aloud from reader
cursive writing practice

Thursday:
Recall story
Draw and summarize in MLB
Math review during circle time
knit

Friday:
Nature journal
Read aloud from reader

We are still ironing out our weekly rhythm as far as our daily chores go.  Things should calm down here soon after camping season is over and we will be able to stick with it more.

How is your year going?  Feel free to share your rhythm or link to your blog post about your curriculum choices and rhythm!

Our plan for third grade

This year for second grade we used A Journey Through Waldorf grade 1 (Waldorf starts their grades a little later than mainstream education), and www.weefolkart.com for prek3.  For third grade, we plan on using A Journey Through Waldorf grade 2 partially, but are looking at using Oak Meadow grade 3 as our main curriculum, and I'm unsure if we will use WFA again for prek4, or the early years guide by Melisa over at Waldorf Essentials.

We thoroughly enjoyed our first year of Waldorf and are looking forward to continuing with the method. I realize Oak Meadow is not considered true Waldorf, but I am okay with that. I'm not the kind of person who can be hard core anything. I pick and choose what I like, what works for us, and leave what doesn't. The Waldorf method seems to be perfect for us in the natural aspects, the rhythm, handwork, stories, artistic aspects and wanting to protect childhood. But, with Jujubee being so far ahead naturally in reading, writing, and math I just couldn't keep "holding her back", so to speak. We will still learn gently, and through a living education vs textbooks/rote memorization. Oak Meadow is slightly more academic, and seems to be a better fit for where she is. For Coco Bear, we may chose the true Waldorf route, as she seems to need more time before she is ready to think about academics. They have always been very different, so I'd expect nothing less than for them to have different learning styles.

I ordered Oak Meadow 3 yesterday and am excited to get it and take a peek. I really wish you could customize it a bit. Ideally we would pick and choose from their grade 2 and 3 to make a perfect fit. Many of the literature choices in grade 3 we have already read, and we have gone over several of the history and science,topics already but I'm interested to see how it is taught in OM. This is also why we will supplement with JTW grade 2. Because I still feel Jujubee needs those stories, and honestly, I do too :)

Homeschool Helper - a planning app!

I am a planner.  I love to plan everything, so that makes homeschooling even more fun for me.  I am also an office supply and organization junkie, always on the search for the perfect homeschool planner. I have to admit, I'm pretty happy with my current paper planner.  (I totally scrapped the online planner from mywellplannedday.com and homeschoolschedutrack.com)

On a whim, I decided to look for homeschool apps for my iPad.  I have searched plenty of times and found nothing but figured it had been a while since I last searched.  WOW!  When I found Homeschool Helper, I immediately thought... I need this.  They had me from the beautiful design, but all the awesome features made it ridiculously necessary.  And... it is only $4.99.  Ha!  Boy are they giving the expensive planners a run for their money!  I've used them, and they fail miserably in the digital department.  Obviously some people just love paper.  I am one of those people.  But, I think I could stick with this planner.  It is SO easy to use and beautiful.

I've tried to find things to change about this app, and besides making it available on multiple devices via cloud, and allowing a student login (where they can view and check off work, but not edit) I can't think of anything it doesn't have. Attendance tracking, lesson planning, scheduling, field trips, grades, reports... You name it!  You can effortlessly use it for multiple students, add your planning information, and view your plan on a beautiful format. I was pretty skeptical at first, not wanting to be fooled by the initial "wow" factor like I had been before. Especially considering it was a fraction of the cost, and I only had to pay ONCE. How could it possibly be good?

Well, if I wasn't sold before, I am now. I love it, and will be using it to plan our next year as soon as my curriculum arrives. What do you use when planning?  Do you enjoy apps as much as I do?