All About Pokemon Hands-On Unit Study Course on Teachable for Grades 3-8

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Current Read-Alouds and Independent Reading Winter 2021

Welcome to the Winter 2021 edition of Current Read-Alouds. If you're not familiar with Read-Aloud Revival or Pam Barnhill (morning basket) or Brave Writer, simply click on the links 😉 I also read to the kids from our Afternoon Basket (because we can't all get going early enough to call it a Morning Basket 😂), which currently includes Story of the World Volume 1, The Gift of the Magi (oh, the vocab words!), and Reading 7 for Young Catholics, among a few other things, like this one:

Scroll down to find out who is hearing which book!

October Homeschooling Fun

October is one of my favorite months!

This month Sam (my youngest, and the one who went to the NICU) turned 10. My husband and I hit 21 years of marriage and the next day he left for Kuwait for 6 weeks (airport field trip!), the same day we closed our swimming pool.

We've been to Paradise Park in Lee's Summit, MO twice (once to play mini golf with our POGO Pass), Wonderscope in Shawnee, KS (POGO Pass), Worlds of Fun in KCMO for the teen boys, a barn dance for my teen girl, three different skate parks, my dad and stepmom's for a lovely day of visiting and not cooking, as well a visit with my grandmother.

Kayaking on our pond, homeschool coop, church, and the Kansas City Chiefs, peppered with my teen boys working hard at their jobs and everybody homeschooling like champs.

I got to see Downton Abbey finally with friends last night, and this weekend includes Kansas City Boo at the Zoo and Johnson Farms in Belton, MO.

Then we get to hang out with my mom next week and then we have HALLOWEEN (to include giving Boorito a try at Chipotle for the first time)!

What are you up to this month?

Drove to our local pumpkin patch, Johnson Farms, just to get pumpkin donuts for our reading time

I needed a coffee (surprisingly, NOT pumpkin spice), and the trees at Starbucks were gorgeous!

A fun book for our story time!

You can always count on Trader Joe's to have something related to a fun, festive fall.

How to Create a Homeschool Vision Statement

Holy cow. I received Pam Barnhill's (Homeschool Solutions) Put Your Homeschool Year on Auto-Pilot 10-module course to review and so far just the first step has changed everything for me! The first step is about creating a vision for your homeschool so everything else can progress from there.

The second step is about creating goals for each child and then after that you come up with the subjects and resources you'll need to meet the goals and stay in line with your vision statement. I'm really excited to progress through this course!

Your vision statement might look ENTIRELY different from mine. It might focus more on getting your kids to Harvard and use words like "rigorous education" and that's great for your family! For my family, I like to focus more on a lifelong love of learning so they are always WANTING to learn and also I want them to serve others, be good workers, and have a lot of fun with this life they have been gifted.

Your vision statement might focus more on sports and it might not focus on religion at all. All families are different!

Here's what I came up with for our vision statement after 12 years of homeschooling:

In our homeschool, we refuse to be dictated by man-made timelines and society’s standards of “normal” (bedtime, travel as a family, job as learning, etc.) and have a lot of fun experiencing the world and the people and places in it, including field trips, dates, book clubs, and party school.

In our homeschool, we strive to consistently practice basic skills like math and language arts until we master them, learning at our own pace and finding out about things we are interested in along the way.

In our homeschool, we strive to practice our religion (serving each other and others, volunteering, TOB), equip our kids for whatever God may call them to, and learn life skills (self-sufficiency, good work ethic, chores, cooking, finances, relationships with siblings, extended family and others).

In our homeschool, we strive to foster a love of books and conversations, sharing good stories and discussions, trying to cultivate a lifelong love of learning.

In our homeschool, we strive to love each other well and point each other to God, enjoying our time together as a family and offering a welcoming haven in our home.

What would your homeschool vision statement look like?

First Day of School Signs

I love the first day of school pictures on Facebook! Why not also for homeschooling?

Here is one of ours from 2018-2019. You can't really see what the signs say so I plan to do more of a close-up this year, but I love how they are all together and by the pool, no less, on the first day of official homeshooling! They were first day of 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th.

Here's how to get the free printables.

Homeschool Conference Weekend 2018! Why I'm Not Going and What I'm Doing Instead

So it's Friday, June 1, 2018 and it's the weekend of the Catholic Homeschooler Conference here in Kansas City. It starts as I am writing this post, at noon, and goes until 9:00 tonight. Then tomorrow it goes from 8-4.

*If you are a conference lover, and I know there are a lot of you out there, I RESPECT THAT! I love that you can go and socialize and buy stuff you need at a great price and listen to great speakers and go back home ENERGIZED about your faith and about homeschooling in general. I am not knocking homeschool conferences at all!

With that said, here's why I am not going — and may never go — to a homeschool conference.

1. I am easily confused. I blame my self-diagnosed ADD — or the fact that I'm running a household with 5 kids and a husband in it and also have a side business ... and am almost 47 years old. If you give me a choice of 100 homeschool resources, my head will explode and I will either get very testy and annoyed and buy nothing or I will try to decide and end up buying too much stuff I will never use and that my kids hate.
2. Too much socialization makes me exhausted. I love seeing my friends and making new ones, but I am doing a lot of socializing this summer by having friends over, and I want to be fresh as a daisy mentally for my pals and their kids.
3. Too much information, in the form of speakers, makes my mind shut down. I need things in bite-sized pieces.
4. I want to be with my kids and husband, who are going away to sleepover camp next week. The timing of conferences around here never seems to be just right for our family ... there is always something going on and I just can't commit to even going for one full day of it.
5. We need to save money (gas, conference cost), and the time spent at the conference is time I either need to be working or hanging with my kids and husband.

What am I doing instead (besides saving gas, conference money and time)?

1. I am listening to Pam Barnhill's The Homeschool Solutions Show podcast on planning and organizing. I also love The Homeschool Highschool podcast, Brave Writer podcast, The Homeschool Sisters podcast, and Read-Aloud Revival podcast.
2. I am watching YouTube videos by Pam Barnhill about planning (10 steps, and the first is to have a vision, which I don't think I've done since my oldest was in first grade and now he's going to be a junior), Erica Arndt (Confessions of a Homeschooler), and Julie Bogart (Brave Writer). Also, others I stumble on that might be helpful.
3. I am working on my list of parenting magazine writing markets that writers are asking me for so that I can sell it and put money away for homeschool books and activities and field trips and PARTIES!
4. I am reading Read-Aloud Revival by Sarah Mackenzie for great book ideas for the coming year. The biggest problem is culling the list and saving some for the next year!
5. I am planning for co-op for fall (Creative Writing and Drama for 5/6 graders).
6. I am formulating what I want to do with my own kids this summer (as far as books we want to read and movies and pool parties).
7. I am ruminating on what I'm learning so I can work this month to plan our 2018/2019 in the best way possible instead of winging it.
8. I am preparing my kids for camp next week. Two of them are going to overnight camp so I want to be with them as much as possible before they leave; the youngest is going to Scout day camp and I am going with him, but there are still things to get ready. Also, don't forget about the things we need to buy for camps, like sunscreen, bug spray, and secret care packages I like to send them.
9. Oh, and I am hanging out by our swimming pool in the country with kids and podcasts. It's called Poolside Professional Development!

So ... are you going to a homeschool conference this year or have you already been? Tell me some cool stuff you learn/learned! Also, do you have any great podcasts or books or videos you have learned a lot from that you'd like to share about?

Why Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman) Homeschools ... and How

I stumbled upon this when I was Googling "laid-back homeschooling" since I'm almost done with my ebook called Laid-Back Homeschooling. I was so excited that Ree Drummond is so much like me! I mean, she obviously loves kids because she has four. She loves her man, just like I do. I mean, I am hopelessly in love with Mr. Kerrie. She writes like me. She lives on a ranch and we are looking at land for our kids to run on. She cooks ... um, well, I have to cook for my family but if Mr. Kerrie was home all the time he would be cooking all the time. I'll have to pick up one of her cookbooks, that's for sure.

Anyway, she also homeschools in a laid-back way because she has so many other things that are going on in her life. I think it's great for kids to see their parents doing other things and great for the parents to have other interests for when the kids leave the nest.

And as for the laid-back type of homeschooling ... I think it's imperative that a parent homeschool the way they are comfortable with. If they need to be structured and strict, so be it. If they need to be more relaxed about it, go for it. Do what is right for you and the kids will be fine!

Here's the post by Ree.