ROGER'S INTRODUCTION

January 8, 2010

Hello, All! I'm April. This may turn out more like rambling or my life story than a great introduction, but I'm going to give it a shot. :)

I'm the wife of Coby - most amazing husband. We've been married since Dec '02, so we just celebrated 7 years. Yay! :) He's an Instructor at the local auto mechanics trade school. I'm a mother of 2 - Zoe 5, Corbyn 3 - and one on the way - we're due in July. Zoe is my super-active, independent, try anything once, head-strong, fashionista. Corbyn is my sweet, Coby look-a-like, cuddle-bug, follower. He loves everyone and just wants to get along. :) They're both amazing blessings! God is so good.

We are in Wyoming and yes we love it. I can't imagine raising our kids anywhere else in the world. It's beautiful (until you're snowed in...) and very sparsly populated. The kids (and parents) are forced to be creative. ;) It totally works out.

We're super new at home schooling, so I can't speak from any experience yet and I can't tell you what "style" I prefer. Infact, even though we've been dabbling in various things before with preschool, this is the first year we'll have a curriculum. I can say though, that with my lack of creativity and "need" for a list of things that have to be accomplished, I'll definitely stick with a lesson plan. :) lol

We really like A Beka because it's what I used when I was homeschooled and I'm comfortable with it, but we've chosen to start out with My Father's World. I read a blurb about MFW's reading program and it sounded great! So once reading is conquered, we plan to switch to A Beka.

I'm so excited to home school this year! I'm also so excited to peek in on this blog and see what's going on with everyone. :)

Blessings to you all!
~*April*~

Notes from Rhonda

Hi I'm Rhonda. I'm a stay at home mommy of two little girls, Maria and Eliza Jane. Maria is 4 yrs old and Eliza Jane is almost 4 months old. I also have 3 adult children,who were home schooled also. I have been married for 28 years to a wonderful man who is retired from the Army and is now a Registered Nurse, in the Emergency room. We live in the Arrowhead of Northern Minnesota, in the country. We raise chickens and goats.

With my old 3 children I used A Beka, and it was a "good fit" we used the VHS videos.
Now with Maria, I am teaching her preschool, and I use a "compote" of teaching styles. I mostly Like Charlotte Mason, and use this style the most. I also use "Before Five In A Row" we love this! Maria also does computer work, she thinks she is "Playing" on the compute, well she is to a point, but also learning so much! She told me she wanted to learn to read, so we use the book, "Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons" I am amazed at how much Maria has learned from just the few lessons we have done, so far. I also use DVDs as a teaching tool. The best DVD to teach the Letter sounds is Leap Frog, "The Letter Factory" In my opinion. Maria learned her letter sounds before she even knew the names of the letters. Now she knows the letters, and learned them by herself. I am also going to use Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace Jr." We want Maria to learn how to handle money, to "Give" "Save" and to "spend" ( in cash) This program is for 3 -12 year old. So we are excited about using this.

Meet THE DECKERS

Hello fellow homeschooling moms. I am Danielle Decker, a 30-something-Stay-at-home-Christian-teaching-Mother, lol. That pretty much sums it up. I have wanted to homeschool my kids since I was a Senior in high school. I have always been involved in church and have felt that more of Christian and church history should be taught in schools as well as other things. I feel that I can teach my kids better than most public school teachers and I enjoy teaching so why not teach my own.
I have been married to my husband, Greg, for 11 years now. We have 3 children to complete our family. The oldest is 16, that is Greg's daughter, and we do not get to see her very often. Our oldest is Amanda, who is 6 and the youngest is Kyle, who is 4. They are 22 months apart.
When Amanda turned 4 I started to teach her preschool. At 5 we did Kindergarten. We went through an academy that went through the public schools. They gave me the majority of the materials for free as well as the lessons. Because my husband was not as confident as I was, that is how we started. It worked well enough, I had the freedom to tweak the lessons or just skip what I thought we could skip. I didn't want to do that all the way through school though. I want to be able to plan my own lessons.
This year it worked to my advantage that I was able to teach on my own using Christian curriculum and plan some myself. This year we are using A Beka. While I think this is a good program, I think that next year I am going to switch to My Father's World curriculum. I still plan some of my own lessons also. For example, I did not get the spelling books, art, or Bible lessons for 1st grade from A Beka. I am planning those lessons myself. I have ordered the reading books that we need for this year using A Beka, but I think that I am still going to continue my own Language Arts lessons. I enjoy planning those a lot.
Kyle is only 4 this year, he will be 5 in February. He wanted to start school and I went ahead and started him with the Kindergarten program through A Beka this year. He is doing great and he loves it.
I plan on teaching the kids all the way through high school. I like to make sure that they are getting Christian materials and lessons mixed in with regular schooling. It is also something that I have been gifted by God to do, so I will do it with my family.

Meet the MeYeR's "Greetings from New Mexico!"

This is all of us at Josh and Lauren's wedding. From left: Dan holding Derek, Josh and Lauren, David in front of Josh, Pat and then me


Hey everyone! I'm Kristy...your average ordinary homeschooling mama. I've been married to the wonderful Mr Dan (aka Hercules or the Love Monkey) for 13 years now and it's been quite an adventure. So adding lots of boys to the mix should keep things from getting boring, right?? We are a regular Plumfield around here (think of the books, Jo's Boys and Little Men) Boys, animals and mayhem abound night and day. In our 'collection' we have 3 biological sons, David 12, Patrick 11 in 2 weeks and Derek 4. We also have Joshua who is 21, grown and married but still frequents the house. (Long story short, Joshua belongs to us...but he's not our child) Over the years, we've had many boys that needed a home for a short time that have stayed with us or only went home to shower and change...they are referred to here as the lost boys. We also have 2 dogs, a cat, a turtle, 2 lizards, a HUGE tank of fish and most recently, a tarantula (that we caught IN the house) LOL~ Have I mentioned yet that we aren't bored?? And up until 3 days ago, my sister, brother in law and 2 nephews and their dog lived here too. Oh my, we do sound crazy in black and white!


Anywho, back to the homeschooling part. We choose to home school NOT because we think that Public school is bad, just that it isn't for us. We've tried it..and it was a poor fit for our family, one child in particular. So for our particular journey we've been homeschooling for 8 years now. D and P both started at home, then went to PS for 2 years (D for 3rd and 4th, P for 1st and 2nd) but it was time for them to come back home and we've been here ever since. D is now in 7th, P is in 5th and Derek is starting pre-K and loving it. We started out VERY rigidly, with charts, lessons planned MONTHS in advance, and everything had to be done at a desk at the 'correct' time. Oh my...what a control freak I was ; ) As the years have rolled on, children have been added to our home, cross country moves, living with other families...I've learned to roll with the punches and have relax quite a bit. Do I still plan? YES! Do I still use a set curriculum? Yes, but I've learned that it's ok to Dr the plans a bit, add to the plans, OR take away from them. Or (gasp!) even toss them all together and start from scratch. Do I still like things done a certain way? YES! Do those things happen?? Not generally...ha ha ha! And that's the "glory of home school"~ if it doesn't get done today, that lesson will still be there tomorrow. For our method. "ISH"...that's a word at our house ; ) It means sorta, kinda, maybe, err, well maybe not. Officially, we are school at home, boxed curriculum kind of schoolers...but we are branching out into lap books, unit studies, do TONS of reading and most recently have thrown our schedule out the window completely. Dan is only working 4 days a week this past year and so we try to get out official studies done in that time frame. Now that sister moved out, half of our school will be done in 2 afternoons a week. So on any given day, you might find us sitting at desks in front of the chalkboard, watching an educational video, calling Grandma with an oral report, out for a field trip, baking in the kitchen or cozied up in a big chair with a pile of books. Life is an adventure. Home school is an extension of that adventure. Come join us as we enjoy living, loving and learning at home.


Kristy

Meet the Terrills "Hi from California!"

Hi, all. Kristy asked me to join her Home School Blog and since I like to blog about our fun homeschooling adventures I joined her! I figure I'll juster post my home school blogs to here and my own home school blog.

My name is Kimberly. We homeschooled for 7 years in Ohio and we are on our second year homeschooling in California. My boys are Ki (13) Connor (15 in 3 weeks) and Gavin (16). Ki has never been to public school. Connor went for Kindergarten and Gavin did kindergarten and 1st grade there. We plan to homeschool totally through high school. We are a bit on the Unschool Side of homeschool spectrum. The boys get to choose their classes and how they want to learn things (just not IF they want to learn) They read when they were ready (some as early as 4 some as late as 5th grade) and same with math (G was ready and asking for algebra type math in Kindergarten. Ki is 13 and still is taking his leisurely stroll through beginning multiplication and some fraction facts. We don't go by grade level or do testing (well thee older 2 have some end of chapter tests for the science they choose) no spelling lists, no curriculum other than what we want to learn right now (not dependant upon what they have learned or 'what is next' according to the books).

In January we do J-Term. a month of just 2 classes- one in the morning and one in the afternoon. they get to choose. Ki asked for sewing and Culinary Arts. Connor also wanted Sewing and he is doing Robotics/Computer Programming along with Gavin. Gavin's 2nd class is Physics. (yes, HIS idea and it is what he asked to do last year for J-Term, too)

So join us in reading about our J-Term Adventures!
Posts by me will have my name as a label (on the bottom).