2011: A Quick Review Through Pictures!

2011 was another great year. There was a new family member born, baptisms, parties and just many memorable time spent with family and friends. To catch everyone up on the happenings of 2011, here are some of the highlights. Enjoy!!

Our year always starts with a celebration. If you are thinking, "Yea...it's New Years!" You are wrong! Our year starts with the celebration of the birth of Isabella!! She turned 7 years old just as we started 2011. Wow...time sure flies!

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue. Sugar is Sweet and So Are You! St. Valentine's Day in 2011 meant making lots of cards to give to friends! My sweet bunch of kids and I got a rare photo together, since I'm usually the one holding the camera!

March brought more moments, like losing another tooth for Isabella and having fun with our science experiments. Homeschooling remains the main component of our day.

With a house full of kids, it seems like it always someone's birthday! Marco turned 9 years old and made a huge leap in maturity. He continues to surprise us with wonderful accomplishments and we feel so blessed to have him!

Easter in 2011 was also an awesome day! Mass, Easter baskets, flying kits, cascarones and a fun day full of celebration of the resurrection of our Lord. It was such a memorable day!

May turned out to be an extra special month in 2011. It began with Isabella's First Communion, which happened to fall on Divine Mercy Sunday and was also the day that Pope John Paul II was beatified!! It was absolutely awesome!

You can't end the school year without a field day. 2011's field day was full of fun! From donut eating to relay races and even 1st place! The entire Catholic homeschool community came together to give our kids a fun and memorable event!

The highlight of May was, of course, the birth of Evangeline Elizabeth! She was by far the biggest baby I've had, weighing just over 9 pounds! Of course, all the children were elated when she was born and it was nice to finally give Isabella a little sister. We were so blessed to have our family grow by one...a little piece of heaven right in our home!









The year continued and led into summer. With piano recitals, vacations with old friends, Marco's first tae kwon do belt graduation and just playing in the rain.












Hosting Vacation Bible School in my home was also a great memory from 2011. My kids had a blast with all their friends and learned some valuable lessons along the way! My family visiting, playing with Legos and just being silly were also fun events of the summer. It's almost impossible to document all the awesome moments we had.

The end of summer held some nice moments. Evangeline was baptized and welcomed into the Catholic Church!

And you can't end summer without a trip to a baseball game! All this just in time for our first day of school where we continued the annual traditions of marching through the house and opening schultutes!!

Back to school always means it's back to co-op too! And we started the year on a great foot! The kids continue to love going to their weekly classes and seeing their friends.

More birthday, friends visiting, family and even a new dog! There were field trips, fall weather, pumpkin carving, Saint Day celebrations and Halloween. Art classes at home, end of year programs, traveling and more. So many moments to capture...so many memories made!

































Hope everyone's year was as great as mine was. There were bumps along the way, but nothing that we didn't get through. Praying for another wonderful year!

*And if you notice my pictures got a little sparse and mixed up towards the end...yeah. Too many pictures to go through and not enough time in my day!

New Year!

It's been a couple months since I last checked in and it's just family time keeping me busy. Which is the perfect excuse to take a break from blogging!! I've been watching baby Evangeline grow, homeschooling the kids and just spending time with the family in general. We've travelled, recovered from colds, finished our first semester of co-op and just been chugging along as usual.

For now I'm just trying to get things in order and really put time into organizing my projects for the new year. There is lots to be done on many levels. Personal, spiritual, home, family, etc. Home projects are what I'm starting with this year as opposed to organization...although that comes with the territory of daily living. The main goals for the year are finishing off some rooms in the house, brightening up some rooms and making some furniture.

Anyways, I'll have to keep everyone updated with what's going down in our home. I'm looking forward to a wonderful new year!!

Dia de los Muertos.

October has come and gone and so has Halloween and All Saints Day. We had wonderful celebrations for both and now we are finally relaxing and trying to catch up with all the other stuff that we have to do. Mainly school work and rotating all our clothing to match the weather!

Not only that, but today we celebrate Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. We remember deceased loved ones, tell stories about them and pray for them. It's a great way to introduce the subject of death to kids in a fun way. Dia de los Muertos is certainly not a sad holiday. It is a fun day full of food, games and crafts. It is a day to make fun of death and to remember that just because our bodies cease to live, our souls do not! Death is a step from this world into the next, where we will come together with our heavenly Father!

I hope everyone out there is surviving this time of year. It certainly is busy for us and I'm trying my hardest to keep my head above water. It's always busy around here with little time for rest. But as my dad always says, "I'll rest when I die!" And he is certainly right about that!

Gifted Children.

Recently, I've been hearing a lot about gifted children. Through friends who are trying to get their kids into the gifted programs at their local public schools, from homeschool moms who are seeing giftedness in their children and in the local news where they've been highlighting the gifted programs and what they offer. I thought this was a great subject to talk about!

First off, I don't know if my kids are truly "gifted." I think all children possess giftedness in some way or another. Some are great at math, some are great at reading and some are great at art. Most children excel in some subject or other. But true giftedness? That would probably mean across the board, above level performance. Which led to me to thinking....what exactly are all these moms prepping their kids for in public schools?

Not too long ago I met a mom who was getting her son tested in order to for him to qualify for the gifted/talented program at a school. She had been prepping him for the test for a couple of months with lots of workbooks and practice tests. At first, I thought she was crazy. I kept thinking, "Hey. If you're kid is really gifted...it won't matter if you prep him for the test or not. And if you have to prep him, then he probably isn't truly gifted."

But them she went into why she wanted him to test into it so badly. The gifted classes were smaller. They offered things like Latin, chess club and more hands-on "real world" learning. When she got to talking about all the perks, I realized that I would probably want the same for my kids, if they were in school.

Of course, homeschoolers don't have that problem. We can teach our kids Latin (and we do!) even if they aren't "gifted." We play chess, our class size is small and there is plenty of real world learning going on all the time. I get to speed things up in any subject I see my kids excelling in and I can slow things down if I have to. There is no need for me to test them!

All my children are covering more than one grade level, which makes it soooo hard to label them. Are your kids in 4th, 2nd, and kindergarten? Well, yes. BUT...not one of them does all their work at grade level. And that is one of the greatest perks of homeschooling. You tailor what you teach to the student...not the class.

So if you happen to be reading this and you happen to send your kids to school. Give homeschooling a second thought. It's really not so bad being around your kids all day. And you'll be happy to know that you won't ever have to fight with a school in order to place your kids in a "gifted" classroom.

Keeping Things Simple.

I still haven't posted my daily schedule and have been working on tweaking it a lot this week. We switched phonics and math, we added a new activity to Fridays and I'm trying to squeeze more time in with Christian's preschool work. Things look chaotic on paper! But it really is coming along and our MOTH (Managers of Their Homes) method is what still continues to work for us. Click here to see some of my previous advice on creating a schedule.

Of course, we know that with a large family it's important to keep things simple if you want to stay sane. It's all about prioritizing. Not too long ago I experience my first burnout. We were doing school, co-op, swimming, dance, piano, soccer and who knows what else. I wanted my kids to be exposed to different activities and to have fun. What I got was a not so happy family. I was chauffeuring kids around 4-5 days out of the week. We were rarely eating dinner together as a family and we were always in a rush. I was cranky so that meant that everyone was cranky. So what happened? I got burnt out. I grew so tired that I dropped every activity besides school and co-op.

It took me almost a year to recover, but I vowed to never do that to myself or my family again. Now I'm learning to keep a healthy balance. My kids are allowed to do 2 activities each. One that benefits them physically and one that benefits them mentally. I combine wherever I can, take shortcuts and NEVER sacrifice family time. The results are working out well so far.

Our extra curricular activities this year? Here's how I have it set up so that I'm able to get all the kids' activities squeezed into our week without sacrificing our family priorities.

• Karate fulfills our physical requirement. This is done together so that I don't have to go back and forth with different sports. They get to help each other and they love it!
• Piano is also done at home. Our piano teacher comes over once a week and takes turns doing the lessons with the kids. That means I don't have to take time off from teaching; so while one child is doing their lesson, the rest are working on their school.
• Art is our new activity this year. It's once a week and the kids also do it together. While they are in class, I walk down the street to the library and load up on books for the week. It works out great!

But what about the littles? I can't take credit for toting around 6 kids with me all the time. I have a nanny who comes in 3 times a week. She mainly takes care of little Jimmy and Christian, unless I have to go somewhere and I leave the whole crew with her. I am hesitant to admit to having this help, but I don't want to seem like super woman. One thing I will add is that to have her over means that we sacrifice in lots of other areas. Again...priorities.

So how do you keep things simple for your own life? Here are some tips.

1. Make a list. Grab a piece of paper and make a column for each child. Under each name, list all the extra curricular activities you would like for each of them to have. Don't be afraid to include yourself and your spouse! It's important to keep in mind all the things you want to accomplish as well when making a schedule.


2. Prioritize and Rank. Rank your activities. Take into consideration all the things that are important to your family when ranking. Are weekends together as family important? Then perhaps soccer might not rank high because of all the Saturday games. Is having dinner together a top priority? That might weed out all evening activities.


3. Minimize. Look over your list and trim wherever you see an activity that is not in line with your family priorities.


4. Pencil it In. Look at your calendar with your new activities penciled in. If your calendar still looks too full, perhaps it's time to go back and minimize some more.


5. Pray. Prayer is a powerful tool when deciding what activities will benefit your family.

In the end, don't be afraid to say "No!" There is absolutely nothing wrong with keeping our kids at home and enjoying our families. It's important not to fall prey to the materialistic culture that plagues our society. More is not necessarily good and our children will not benefit from having a full schedule that keeps them away from family. We have to remember that in teaching our children, we want to prepare them for heaven above all else!

Family Time, Happy Kids or Over-scheduled, Cranky Kids

9/11

Today marks the 10th anniversary of 9/11. My prayers are with all the victims of that horrific attack, both living and deceased.

So many lives lost, so many affected. We will never forget.

Early Winners.

We are coming upon mid-September already and school is in session for mostly everyone. For families that started early, like ours, we are already figuring out what the winners and losers are for the year. Here is a snippet of what's working so far, what's not, and what we're on the fence about.

Winners...So Far.

1. 
   Saxon Phonics. We are using this phonics program for Anthony, Isabella and even Marco! I love that it's scripted and the kids haven't complained yet! It combines phonics with spelling, which I find helpful in getting the kids to understand their phonics rules. For Anthony, this is his core program. Isabella and Marco are both using the Saxon Phonics 2 program and it is completely review. It's working fantastic, although sometimes I wonder if coding all those words is helping them read proficiently. But if they are showing success with it, I can't argue!
   
   
2. Famous Men of Greece (Memoria Press). We are using this for history and following Angelicum Academy's lesson plans. So far the kids love it. It's colorful and interesting to them and I like that it covers vocabulary and reading comprehension, among other things (the suggested activities are great).


3. Poetry Memorization from IEW. This is super easy to do and the kids LOVE it so far! The kids recite their poetry in the morning, during lunch and then for their dad over the dinner table. It's great fun for them!


4. A Nature Walk With Aunt Bessie from Queen Homeschool. This is the science I'm doing with all the kids together. It's completely from a Charlotte Mason Approach and completely fun for the kids! We do this everyday and it is something the kids look forward to. I love that it's compatible for all the kids, from Christian in preschool to Marco in 4th grade.

Runner Up. Still sitting on the fence.

1. Latina Christiana. Perhaps it's my own insecurities with teaching Latin that make this program so difficult for me. Marco and Isabella do this together and they are doing well, although I'm always unsure about how well they have grasped the vocabulary. I'm hoping that as the year progresses, I'll be more confident in teaching it and the kids will continue to do well with it. For them, this is not a favorite subject...but it gets done! We are taking it super slow!


2. Map Essentials. This is another Angelicum course that I have loved over the years. But now that Marco is doing his 4th grade book, it's getting more rigorous (which is great!) but less fun. And I'm all about the kids having fun when it comes to geography. Why shouldn't it be fun? It's a solid program...it's National Geographic! But I think I was hoping for something that would make learning cartography and geography more hands on. Perhaps I'll supplement if we have the time; after all, this is done only once a week.

Losers.

1. Vocabu-Lit. We followed Angelicum's suggestion of using Vocabu-Lit for 4th grade. The workbook is great and it uses literature to teach new vocabulary. But as we were progressing through the book, Marco began to get more and more frustrated with the work. "It's too hard! I hate it!" So I did further reading to see what the problem could be. Well, it turns out that the book that Angelicum is recommending for 4th graders is actually a 6th grade book!! That might be fine and dandy for kids who are great readers, but for the average kid...this might be a little too much. So I abandoned Vocabu-Lit and am going back to using something more grade appropriate. So I guess in the end, it really isn't the program that's a loser...it's just a loser because we were using something that wasn't suited to our grade level.

That's it! Looks like we don't really have lots of losers this year. All other materials are straight from Angelicum and we are enjoying them all. I hope that all you homeschoolers out there are having luck with your curricula. It's always a mystery as to what will work, but thank goodness that we have the luxury of tailoring our teaching to what our kids need!