The Plans of Mice and Men (and moms)...

Once again, I spent some time this summer tweaking the school room and the basic plans for curriculum and schedule and such. I thought we were ready to move into the official school year. Apparently, Baker was not as ready as I though or maybe he is just being ornery. For the past two weeks, he has spent quite a bit of time on the laundry room stairs. The Lord really encouraged me the past few days with similar stories from other moms. I have spent quite a bit of time in prayer for me and for my son. As you can imagine, I have delayed getting this post up because I have been so worn out. All you mommas that school more than one child, my hat is off to you. To think about having a sibling around that Baker would feed off and vice versa, I'd probably throw in the towel. LOL!

Here are the pix of our spiffed up room. We found out that Baker is just slightly nearsighted so he now has a lamp on his desk since good lighting will help him see more clearly. I have built a break into the morning which seems to help us. We are continuing with the work box system. It has been such a tremendous blessing to us.

I am loving the "morning meeting" board that has his memory work, calendar, a critical thinking activity, visual art from our artist of the month and our We Choose Virtues card. It has made it easy for me to incorporate some of these things that I have and probably would continue to forget to do - namely, critical thinking and learning about the artist.

The art card that you see on the board is from the Usborne decks, "Famous Paintings" and "Impressionist Paintings". There is information about the artist and the style on the back of each card. It's a mini art course in a deck. Let me know if you want to order. We are loving them.

The We Choose Virtues card has been a great introduction to our curriculum. Right now we're doing one a week. The back of the card has a clear definition of the virtue and a verse. We review it every day. I downloaded the coloring book so we are making a book as we go. For every virtue, there is a color sheet followed by a page with the verse in cursive that he traces (I use abcteach.com to make those).  He even hugged his "book" to himself one day and said, "I love my virtues book!". Granted he was disobeying within a few minutes but now I know we are deliberately working towards better behavior. To purchase these materials for your family or church, use "AMY" at checkout to get $8 off the flash cards. The coloring book is $1. The teacher manual is now in a downloadable format for $4.99. The fridge poster is on sale and it's one our fridge so the material is in front of us all the time.

I love seeing your home school spots so please share!

Finally - pix as promised

I am finally getting back to my blog. The first week of Loften Academy went pretty well. We had a couple of "sit on the laundry room stairs until you can obey" incidents but I was prepared for them to happen. Fortunately, he decided that having nothing to look at but the washing machine was pretty boring and the 2nd time out was much shorter than the first one - LOL!

I have to say that we are love, love, loving the work box system. Thank you, Sue Patrick! It is so nice to see the work getting done and incorporating centers and lap books and games and other such goodies to reinforce the lessons has been so easy! Baker gets excited to do that sort of stuff and I can really see what he has mastered and what we need to re-cover and/or practice a bit more. 

I even got it together enough to set up some "work" for Anna Marie. She has gotten in the spirit of it all as well. When I announced on Friday that it was time for school, she went straight to the door and attempted to turn the knob while saying "bye". She has even sat in her chair and wanted to work like her brother does. She has been "singing" the alphabet song with him, clapping when he recites or reads his memory work and so on.

I have, of course, been tweaking things as we go along so I'm still spending a lot of my time in that "first year of teaching" mode when you are just consumed mentally and physically with getting things "just right". Click here to see the pix! Explore the links on the left. There will be many more to add and I'll touch on each one over the next however many months. 


Most of all, go and experience God's pleasure in your steadfast home school, mom, wife journey. We change the world, ladies! Don't let Satan try to convince you otherwise.

Target, baby!

I ran into my local west Little Rock Target to return some things and checked out the $1 / $2.50 section. The buzz on some of my Yahoo groups and blogs that I drop in on and scan were full of home school and/or parent treasures just waiting to be found in this area. Sure enough, I found some more! (This was my third cruise through that area specifically for school stuff. Don't tell my husband - LOL!)


I found a tabletop standing pocket chart ($2.50) and another one that can be hung or used flat ($1). My mind is reeling with the possibilities for these. I bought a Math Bingo game for $1. I bought two pencil cups for my desk along with a long note pad to jot down the random thoughts that will cross my mind while I'm at my desk. There are still flashcards and workbooks and write on/wipe off mats, pencils, stickers, teacher plan books, puzzles and all sorts of things that I already have or something similar so I refrained. They have shallow boxes for $2.50 that would work very well with the work box system along with the chrome shelves that are reasonably priced and still available.

I also purchased "milk crate" containers in the college room section for $2 each. They were in the weekly flier so I was hoping that some were left. There were and a good selection of colors as well. The crates stack and can be used with hanging file folders. I have one FULL of Math goodies and one FULL of language goodies. I will probably get another to store puzzles for the puzzle center. Have fun shopping!