The Evolution of Homeschool Records

We are thinking about making a big change in the way we homeschool and I was looking at my homeschool records to see what we have accomplished in the last 6 years. I had to laugh at the contrast between the records that I kept when I first started homeschooling Sierra as a kindergartner and our records now.

Here is the record for Sierra's first day of kindergarten:

8/25/03
10:30 - 11:10 - writing practice, capital letters A, B, C, and D
12:00 - 12:30 - Art - blow pens, scissors, markers
1:30 - 1:50 - Reading - lesson 45
2:15 - 2:30- science - absorption
5:30 - 5:50 - Math - number writing

Here are the records I keep now:

April -
Math and Grammar Readers
Story of the World
Carnival of the Animals
Poetry

Oh my, how times have changed! I will admit that keeping track of the exact times only lasted 3 days, but I did keep daily records until November of 2007.

I meant for this post to show how laid back we had become since we first starting homeschooling 6 years ago, but since we are about ready to make a change in the way we homeschool, I have been thinking alot about what our reasons for homeschooling are and if we have been accomplishing them. It just occurred to me that about the time that I stopped keeping daily record was about when I feel like we started accomplishing less in our homeschool. Hum...

I have thought about what factors might have caused this shift. My youngest turned 5 that November and became an offfical part of our homeschool, the older girls started attending a one day a week program that fall, and we started hanging out with a bunch of unschoolers. Interesting... I guess it could have been any one of these factors or a combination.

I will post later about the big change we are thinking of making.

Hawaii - finally!

We have been living in Hawaii for almost a month now. Just a few more things to do before I finally feel "settled in."
Here we are checking in at the airport in Ohio.


Walking to our gate.


Waving goodbye to the mainland.

Hanging out on the airplane.
We forced the children to sleep just a little bit. I sleep for about an hour, but Rand didn't sleep at all.

We just spotted land
Arriving in the Honolulu airport. Yes, that is an open air walkway.

The lady from the University who picked us up greeted us with leis.

Our new home. Pink! We love it. So appropriate since we have 3 girls.

While exploring the house we discovered that we already had a pet.

The girls enjoying their first Hawaiian Shave Ice.

The Polynesian Cultural Center. It is 2 blocks from our house, so of course we got season passes right away.

Now it's time to get back to regular life. It is kind of weird to do that in a place where it seems like we should be on vacation. We are excited to see what adventures we will have in such an interesting place.

What we have been up to for the last 6 weeks, part 2

The Family Edition
The second half of our road trip was spent visiting family. The girl's had a great time with their cousins.
Rock Band

Playing cards

Some weird game that Sierra and Evan made up...

And of course, hanging out with the aunts and uncles
Aunt Tracy
Uncle Drew and Aunt Marquesas

In Ohio, we got to play with Lily
Rub-a-dub-dub 2 girls in a tub

All the girls in their pretty dresses

Since we were near Columbus, we couldn't resist stopping and getting some cream puffs from Schmidts - Yum!


Finally, Grandma hosted a going away party for us with yummy cake decorated with palm trees.

Next: We arrive in Hawaii!

What we have been up to for the last 6 weeks, part 1

On the morning of July 30th, this is what all of our possessions looked like.


In a few short hours our stuff would be tightly packed into a moving container

Here it is. Just 20 feet of space to cram all of our worldly goods into. And it fit, almost... we ended up leaving behind 2 small shelves and my wedding dress.

To anyone in Utah or Colorado: DO NOT use Bailey's Moving Company! They will underestimate the weight of your stuff, so that they can charge you extra when you go over your weight allowance, even though you meticulously got rid of what you thought was thousands of pounds of stuff. Later we found out that we weren't the only ones that this happened to. End rant.

Finally, it was time to hit the road. First stop, Santa Fe. While it was a cute little town with cool adobe houses. It was crowded and lacked available parking, so we end up only staying one day instead of two.En route to Carlsbad Caverns we stop in Roswell and ate lunch.


Green Chile Cheeseburger with guacamole - Yum!

Carlsbad Caverns. The first night we watched the bat exodus. The next day we toured the caverns. The girls dubbed this the best part of our road trip.
Onto San Antonio. A fun day even though we almost melted. The Alamo was very interesting and the River Walk was a great place to go to cool off. As we walking to our car, Kali grabbed the gate of the Alamo and cracked us all up by yelling, "We're the Mexican's. Let us in!"

In Austin, we enjoyed touring the State Capitol.

A side trip to Lockhart where we sampled 3 different BBQ joints.


And visiting friends.

Up next: the family portion of our trip.