The McNairs and Four Heirs: 2014

I feel like the last 4 years of my life has been nothing but changes! A divorce, 2 years as a single mom, a move out of our house into an apartment remarriage, moved to a new town, started homeschooling, a new baby, moved again 3 months ago..and now..ANOTHER MOVE. I'll be honest, I'm ready for some stability, to know we can be settled for a while. I need it, and I know Cade and Liam need that, also. I'm looking forward to getting to a new town, where we will make all new memories with our family...just memories from us. I LOVED living in NWA, but I have a lot of memories there that are from my old life, that didn't include Bryan, just as he has memories from this area of his old life. It's not a bad thing, but it will be nice to start over with all new memories for our family to make together. We really don't know when this move will happen, but we do know Bryan will be starting his job in the new hospital on June 9th. If we aren't living there by then, we will be spending a lot of time in a hotel until we get moved. I'm SO thankful we homeschool. It is allowing us to travel with Bryan when he needs to be in Hot Springs for work. I was able to go with him last week while the boys got some much needed time with Nana and Papa. We will all be going next week to spend the week there while Bryan works, so we'll be doing school on the road. I love that we have the option to do that!

Speaking of school, we took a spring break and are back at it now. Over the break, I took the time to change up pretty much everything we are using for school. We were all getting tired of the tons of worksheets we had to do daily, and that's not how I want our school to look anyway. So, we have switched to Heart of Dakota. We are loving it! There are so many great, quality books that we are reading now. Classics that I never even read as a kid, I'm getting to read now with my boys and I love it! They are so interested in the books and they are learning a lot. We get so much with HOD. We get history, science, poetry, Bible, music, art, grammar (for Cade), and reading. I add in my own phonics and math for them. We do everything together except for phonics and math. They do those separately, since they are on different levels. That has made our day go much smoother. During the mornings, we do all the subjects we do together, take a break for lunch and some playtime, and then they do their separate subjects after lunch. This schedule has worked really well so far. They are both learning so much, and I'm so proud of them. Liam is really catching on with reading, and Cade has just taken off with his reading! I love seeing that, considering he was struggling with reading when we first starting homeschooling. I love being able to be with them as they are learning all these new things, and I'm even learning stuff with them :)

Beckham is getting so big! He is crawling and pulling up and has let go of the couch a few times and stood without holding on. I have a feeling he is just going to take off running soon. I can tell he wants to. He has brothers to keep up with! He loves to give kisses and he is a mama's boy! He always wants me in sight, and I admit, I love it! He and I have definitely developed a strong bond. I love him so much! I even miss him when I leave him in the nursery at church, and that's just for an hour! I'm sure you can guess he and I haven't spent much time apart.

So, we have lots of exciting changes coming up! I'm looking forward to our move and getting settled. Not so much looking forward to packing up all of our stuff again. But, I know we are going somewhere that we can finally be settled for a while, so it will be worth it! I will try to keep my blog updated with our move and the new adventures we will be having!

This will be a homeschooling post. Keep reading if interested!

Before Christmas, I felt we were all on the verge of burnout. We have been "schooling" since June. We started early, because Beckham was due in September, and I knew we would be take time off to adjust to life with a newborn. But...Beckham was a great newborn! And, we ended up only taking 1 week off of our school work. My original plan had been to take a month off, but we just didn't need that much time. Fast forward to the beginning of December. I was stressing out because I felt like I wasn't getting enough done with their books to be finished with everything by late April or early May. Cade was very much near burnout..it was like pulling teeth to get him to finish his schoolwork! It would seriously take him 3 hours to finish just a few math problems, and they weren't difficult problems, just simple addition. I knew it was time for a change.

So, over Christmas, we took a much needed 2 weeks off. I took that time to plan the next 9 weeks of school and to order new curriculum. I could tell they were getting bored with what we were using and that was part of the problem with getting Cade to do his work. Also, after talking to Bryan, we decided to go to a year round school schedule. As Voddie Baucham says, if you know what grade your kid is in, you're doing homeschooling wrong :) If you haven't heard of him, look him up on YouTube. I LOVE listening to him speak. He has a great message on homeschooling that is a great listen! Switching our schedule has given me so much relief. We can work at the pace we need to work at. I ordered a lot of new curriculum over the break, and now Cade is officially a 1st/2nd grader. I love that we can work on the level he needs instead of trying to keep up or stay back with what he would be learning in public school.

On top of the new curriculum, I knew we needed a routine. There were some days that we would be doing school before bed. Days like that just threw me off. Some people can homeschool with a schedule like that, but it just doesn't work for us. I find I get the best work out of the boys when we do it first thing in the morning. If we wait until after lunch, I may as well forget them learning anything because it will be a fight to get them to focus.

Our new routine/schedule has been working great. If you're interested in what a day looks like for us, here it is :)

At 9:30, we do Bible together. We are just following one of the plans for kids on YouVersion. The one we're doing right now is called Heroes of the Bible. It's been really great and they are enjoying it. We have something we read out of the Bible each day, then a story that explains what was going on and a video to watch from What's in the Bible with Buck Denver. Most days also has a coloring sheet to go along with it.

After Bible, we start on math. Cade is doing math with Easy Peasy All In One Homeschool. This is a GREAT free complete curriculum that's online. There are some worksheets to do, games, an videos. I also usually add some of my own worksheets to it to reinforce what he is learning. Because most of it is online, he's able to do a lot of the math himself. I help him if needed.

During this time, I work with Liam on his math. Liam is using Abeka K5 math. He is flying through it. He has been doing this for 2 weeks (8 days), and is already on lesson 19. I think it will get harder as we get more into the book, though, so I'm sure we will slow down. But, I am kind of wishing I had bought him the 1st grade book instead. Oh well..we will make it work. Bryan says I can't spend anymore on curriculum ;)

After math, Cade gets a short break while I work on phonics and writing with Liam. Liam is still using Abeka K5 Phonics and writing and he's doing really great with it. He is about halfway through all the lessons and is starting to read! I was intimidated to teach him to read and at first, I really was thinking it wasn't going to work. But, we just had to find the program that worked for him and Abeka has been great.

After Liam is done with phonics and writing, I do either science or history with Liam. We do science 2 days per week and history 3 days per week. I'm using Lesson Pathways for him. This is another free curriculum that's online. It has a lot of fun activities to go along with the lessons. We are really enjoying it!

After that, Liam is done with school for the day, so I spend the rest of the time focused on Cade. For his phonics, spelling and language arts, he is using Abeka's 2nd grade curriculum. We are liking it a lot. Earlier in this school year, he completed 1st grade Hooked on Phonics as well as some Explode the Code workbooks. I think Abeka is going to really help him improve with his reading. We are also using Abeka to learn cursive. Two days per week we do science. He is also using Easy Peasy for science. We are doing biology. We do history 3 days per week. We do a combination of Story of the World and Mystery of History. We are really enjoying this. It's a classical approach to history and I just love how it intertwines Biblical history into world history. I think I'm learning just as much as Cade is! With history, we are making a timeline to show everything we are learning. It also suggests map work, which I was going to skip but just today Cade asked if we could make maps, so I guess we will be doing that as well!

We are done with school by 12:00 or 12:30 each day. This new schedule has been great. I've accomplished everything I want to with them during the week, we have all afternoon free to do whatever we want and I don't feel like we are falling behind!

If interested, here is a little peak into a day at our house!

Beckham hanging out...have to add this one because he's cute ;)