How to print a Pinterest boards!

I used my Pinterest boards a bunch to help me find books for each unit, crafts that didn't look too crazy hard for us to do and even songs and short videos on topics. It truly is a treasure trove of info! I knew of two other moms who have similar philosophies and were using the same curriculum, and I invited them to pin on the boards too. I knew that if I had 300 pins on my board that would be overwhelming! Most of my boards have around 50 pins each. Some are much less and one has 91! It was also a favorite unit of mine to learn about! Having the hard copy in with my files was helpful at the library for finding books, by titles mainly, craft supplies I might need to get, and just as a reminder of something I saw that I thought my kiddos would love. You can print any board! Not just yours! Print mine if you like!





Here are the directions for printing:

 -Open the board you are wanting to print.
 -Wait until all your pins load before choosing to print
  (If you press print and they aren't all loaded, they won't all print- Found that out the hard way!)
 -Right click and select print
 -The print option will pop up and I changed my printer to landscape and then pressed cancel
  (I found that it fit more on a page and didn't cut off some of my pins in landscape mode)
 -Then press print again and scroll down to see that the last pin is on there
- All you have to do is then PRINT! Voila! Pretty easy to do!

First and Last Day of School Pictures

We did it! We completed our first year of homeschooling! It was no easy task at times, but I loved spending time with these 3!

Will we continue to homeschool? YES! I have been researching curriculum and have finally decided on one! I really had something in each curriculum that I didn't care for, but didn't want to piece together a set either. So I went with our best match - Look for another blog post for that! 

P.S. - I got these cute printable signs using Google search and now I have no idea where I found them! I'm glad I printed both first and last day signs at the same time! Note to self!

Creation Unit

Learning about creation from the Bible was fun for my girls. We used a Children's Bible as well as a few other books for this week's theme. I am not a stick to the teacher's manual kinda teacher, so I elaborate and find myself really diving deep when I am passionate about a topic.

This girl loves to cut! We have had an incident in the past were she cut her hair, so scissors are hard to find in our house! I let her cut with supervision now and she will take leftover pieces of paper and make ginormous messes with all her little scraps! After she's done, we do a quick vacuum sweep to clean it up and it's a-ok!

My friend teaches Kindergarten and she went through her things over the summer and gave us some games and fun things she no longer uses in her classroom. We went over the letters and put them in sections like the song. We love puzzles as a family and my girls are usually pretty good at doing them.

This was just a couple of the days were they created a page for what God did on that day.

If it is a nice sunny day outside, why sit inside to work? Even with my public school classes, I loved taking them outside to work or do science outside in nature. We work on a mat, cause boy do I itch sitting in the grass after long! 

 This book was really fun to read. It was so interesting how schools are in other places and the USA school was showing a homeschooling family! I had no idea when I checked the book out! We didn't read the book word for word, but rather I skimmed it and told them highlights of each place and ways the school was different from most others. 

Working without clothes makes it so much more relaxed ya know! 

Here is my Creation Unit Pinterest Board where I pinned activities, books, crafts and more! 

Sickness and homeschooling

Being sick isn't fun, but knowing that your child isn't missing instruction if they were attending a traditional school is one comfort I have found by homeschooling. All three of my girls came down with something - fever, constant sleeping and not eating much for a few days. We just stopped school til they were better and picked up where we left off. It changed my schedule for when Christmas break started, but I didn't stress about it. I started in July to give myself some wiggle room and extra days of doing nothing if we wanted. We still finished school by my deadline of May 20th.

 In the public school system that I worked at if you had fever you weren't allowed to return to school until you were fever free for 24 hours. Sometimes I would have students gone for days and then trying to catch them up was hard. If they were a higher leveled student it wouldn't take much to teach them a concept review and they were good to go. My lower students had a harder time "catching up" on assignments. If they were slower paced workers and now they are not only 3 days behind and missing vital instruction, they aren't allowed to bring the work home with them necessarily to do if it's for a grade. 

We do a women's Bible study once a week and we have park playdates here and there, but really my children are less sick than before I stayed home. Being at a in home daycare and with multiple other kids they tended to be sick more often. Runny noses that were constant and coughs that seemed to never go away are a thing of the past. Thankfully when we stayed home more, we got less germs! Go figure! Without fail it seems that my girls pick up germs visiting the Dr office for check ups!

Question for you - Besides being sick, how has homeschooling helped or forced you to be more flexible?