A week away

I decided to take a week away from Facebook last week and direct my attention elsewhere. I have some big plans in the works involving our home life and needed to give myself a big kick in the right direction. First off, organization (or RE-organization in some cases). There are way too many "hot spots" in this house, you know, the places where all the junk without a home ends up. Those places needed to be cleared of clutter and the inhabitants relocated to a real place of their own. I made plans to join in the 21 day organizing challenge over at A Bowl Full of Lemons, and I did - I just didn't do it in the same way. I am by no means finished with this quest, I have more boxes, bins, baskets, and shelves to buy to finish up the other half of this mountain of a project. And some of the things on the challenge list didn't exactly apply to me so I varied slightly. I also have a lot of things already in some sort of order and just needed to give it a facelift. So, just to show you what I have done so far, here is the first half of what I've accomplished! I think I'll list them by rooms instead of in the order they were done.


KITCHEN:

First up, the junk drawer (or the one in the kitchen anyway). This drawer is barely big enough for all that we need in it so I could only organize it so much, but you gotta admit, it looks way better than it did before!

Then, under the kitchen sink. I have no idea why, but there were empty cleaning bottles under here. Can you say lazy? Ugh!

The pantry! In all of these places, the rules were to take EVERYTHING out, clean the space then refill in a more organized manner. And obviously when it comes to food, throw away what's expired!

The refrigerator - I think I was looking forward to this one the LEAST, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be. Yay!

 

The freezer. This was easier than the fridge, perhaps because it's only a fraction of the space!

The spice cabinet. Embarrassingly there was a lot to throw away in here too. I really had to fight with that shelf to get it in there, but I was determined and I won! Much better, right?

SCHOOL ROOM:

The computer desk is in our school room. Most of what is piled here is school stuff (which I have yet to get to, I need another shelf first), so I cleared off all the school related things and will try to keep this desk just for computer related things. It won't be easy to do since it shares a room with our school, but I WILL try! Hopefully I can get that shelf and get to the school stuff very, very soon!!

MASTER STUFF:

Heading into my bedroom we come to the dresser and chest of drawers. On the challenge she cleaned and organized the clothes inside, my clothes are already separated and folded so I tackled the craziness on top!

And the last thing on the list for today is the laundry room, which is right next to our bedroom. This space just needed a good wipe down, and it got it! Now everything looks white again!

So like I said before, I need more bins, and boxes to finish up the other things on my list, and it will be coming soon! Here are a few of the spaces I plan on conquering this week: under our bathroom sink, the master closet (scary!), the mail, the medicine cabinet, and my pots, pans, mixing bowls etc. Here is the list of things I will get to after that, as long as I can get the tools I need: keepsakes, pictures, the play room, the school room, and my sewing closet. There, so now that you all know what's coming you can keep me accountable!

Sneak Peek Revealed!

I know I'm super late with this, but FINALLY, here are the homemade Christmas gifts I made this year. They all turned out really well, I'm so proud! First up are the crayon rolls I made for some little ones. I ended up using a different set of fabric than what I posted in the sneak peek because I just really loved these girly glittery ones!

Rolled Up



Open



I will be making a much bigger version of these for the girls to use in school, I think it will help keep crayon spillage to a minimum. I love our cute little buckets that house them right now, but having a crayon roll will encourage getting out one at a time and putting it back before getting another.

Here is a big kid version with markers, pens, and pencils.



Rolled Up



Open

I also made a matching taggie football for the baby brother!



The gifts I was most proud of were these silhouettes I made for the kids grandma's and the one for my girlfriend (of her kids).

For Grammy


 

For Nana

 

For Tootie

I had originally planned on doing the traditional look of the silhouette being in an oval frame but I had a very hard time finding an oval frame that didn't cost an arm and a leg, especially since I had to make 11 silhouettes! I settled on a large frame for my kids and just put them all together. For my friend I found a longer rectangle frame and lined the kids up. I couldn't fit oval backgrounds inside the frames without the silhouettes being awfully small and I didn't want to have to squint to see that these were our kids, so I used my off white cardstock to make two layers of outlines around the black silhouette for an almost 3D look, and I gotta say, I LOVE the way it turned out! I would have liked to put my four in the same type of frame as I did my friends, but I couldn't find one big enough. I plan on making a much larger one of each kid in its own oval frame for my living room very soon! I can't wait!

So there ya go, my most recent projects! Thanks for looking!

21 Days to getting Organized!

I stumbled upon a challenge to help get me organized and I'm so IN!  Hopefully it won't be another one of those things I start and don't finish! Here's the link... come on, you can play too!

Prissy Pants is a Smarty Pants

Since starting PP with official math curriculum last year I've learned that anyone can be a math whiz!  Sure, some will pick it up easier than others, but really it just takes learning it the right way and getting an understanding of it to become a math whiz!  In the public school setting it takes someone with a natural knack for numbers to truly succeed and especially to retain it.  Math just isn't taught correctly and there is not enough one-on-one for it to make sense to each individual child. In my opinion.

When choosing a math curriculum I did my "homework" and read countless reviews.  I don't personally know anyone who uses Math-U-See but the reviews sucked me in.  Just the name was convincing enough for me!  I want my kids (and myself along the way) to be able to SEE the reasons behind math.  To really understand it and not approach it as a four letter word like I did through my entire 13 years in public school!

PP and I both were excited to start our new math workbook, Math-U-See Primer, last year for Kindergarten!  There were a few instances of struggle, but it mostly revolved around learning to ignore distractions and focus on the task.  Overall, she proved to be a math whiz and loved opening up that workbook the entire year!  This year we've moved on to Alpha and more times than not she's working alone and I'm checking it when she's done - I wasn't expecting that to happen for a few more years!  She loves math and never complains about having to do it.  I'm even learning a few things myself and I'm actually looking forward to the middle school and high school level math!  I can't wait to finally get it! Math-U-See was definitely the right choice for our family and we highly recommend it! What mom doesn't want to see their child smile this big when doing math? MUS = two thumbs up from each of us!

Since PP finished learning to read with Reading Made Easy last year, I wasn't sure what to do about reading this year.  I decided to work on reading comprehension.  Every day PP grabs an early reader from our stack (that we received from a teacher friend a few years ago), she takes it to her room, reads it twice, then comes to me for a "quiz".  I thought being able to comprehend what she reads would take some practice, but I noticed even last year while learning to read that she was really getting what she was reading. Needless to say, our reading comprehension is going extremely well this year!  Most days she pretty much recites the book to me!  I can always tell when she's got toys on the brain and really just wants to finish reading and go play, but even still, she's doing fantastic!

My kids abilities to learn so quickly and easily never cease to amaze me! Thank God for children who love to learn and who can understand and retain it!





Rosetta Stone Giveaway!!

Now is the perfect time to give your child the gift of possibilities for the holidays with Rosetta Stone Homeschool — and you can WIN a Level 1 Homeschool program, language of your choice (valued at $249)!




Right now Rosetta Stone is having a special Holiday promotion on our Homeschool Edition program and we’d like you to help spread the word! Everyone can save up to $150 on Rosetta Stone Homeschool by visiting our website at http://www.RosettaStone.com/hsw1110.



By helping us spread the word you can win a Rosetta Stone Homeschool Edition Level 1 program, language of your choice, valued at $249.



This is a computer based curriculum and Rosetta Stone will also include a headset with microphone, and a supplementary “Audio Companion” CD so you can practice lessons in the car, on the go, or where-ever!





Students participate in life-like conversations and actually produce language to advance through the program. Rosetta Stone incorporates listening, reading, grammar, vocabulary and writing along with speaking and pronunciation lessons. For parents, the new Parent Administrative Tools are integrated into the program to allow parents to easily enroll up to ten students in any of 12 predetermined lesson plans, monitor student progress, grade completed work (the program grades the work automatically as the students progress), and you can view and print reports for transcripts. Homeschooling a lot of kids at your house? This program is designed to enroll and track up to ten students (five users on two computers) and will work for nearly all ages — from beginning readers up to college students.



To win this program, copy these paragraphs and post them in (or as) your next blog post, and/OR post about this contest on your facebook page. Then go to the original page at

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K 4 Z

My sweet baby Z Girl is 4 years old and has been doing K work in school this year. She learned to recognize, name, speak, breathe, juggle, and be friends with the entire alphabet and numbers 0-10 last year. Shapes and colors, been there - done that. She's pretty much done everything PP has done from the very beginning and learned right along with her, it's amazing! I teach PP, and both of them learn! How cool is that? So anyway, Z was bored to tears with PreK stuff but I was afraid to buy her K curriculum this year since villain #4 was due to arrive just as school was starting and I didn't want to overwhelm myself (pretty sure that was a run-on sentence. That's right, I be teaching my kids at home!). I ended up getting Z a huge K workbook from the bookstore and every day she wanted to tackle it like 6 pages at a time! And now she's finished it. Smarty pants. If I can ever get my Math-U-See account and my visa check card on the same wavelength then Z will get her Primer workbook and start official math.

We have, however, started learning to read with Valerie Bendt's 'Reading Made Easy'. This is what PP used to learn to read last year and it worked fantastically! I wasn't sure how Z was going to do with reading since she's only 4 and went into it with expectations of going very slowly. But, Reading Made Easy doesn't require the child to recognize the letters or know their sounds in order to start, so Z already knowing them put her at an advantage (as it did PP last year). Z is doing so well, of course, she's always one step ahead of me! She's reading short sentences and last week started learning how to read words with silent letters in them! Way to go Z Girl! In our house, Reading Made Easy makes learning to read easy and fun! Hopefully it will prove consistent with FB and the Boy!

And now, for your viewing pleasure and because her eyes and smile are too stunning not to share, here is my amazing Invisible Z Girl who comes out every so often for a good photo and leaves me speechless! 

 

Just look at those lashes!



Little Learning

FB did some hands on color matching with primary colored blocks and bears in school yesterday. She enjoyed it very much!

First we reviewed the colors

Then she got started

Just look at the concentration on that face!

WAY TO GO FB!

 

Eventually color matching turned into kissing bears

 

And a little later it turned into bucket head.

But, 'Bucket head' loved the blocks and bears and we'll definitely be doing that again! We can also use them for sorting and counting, we love manipulatives in this house!