Do you follow your local school district's schooling days?

Currently we "loosely" follow the local school district's schooling days. For two reasons: 1) When my kids' public school friends have days off, we are able to get together with them for playdates without missing any school. 2) I like that my kids change grades at the same time as everyone else. I am not sure how I would keep track otherwise. Does that make sense?

When I say "loosely" follow the local school district, this is what I mean: We generally start about the same time, after Labor Day, sometimes a week or so before if we are getting bored with summer. We take the same Christmas and Spring Breaks. We take the same summer breaks. However, we are usually done a couple weeks before. We do not, however, take the same "lack of funding days", "parent-teacher conference days" or "snow days". Oh, and we also take all the federal holidays off.

We have been doing this for the past eight years....but.....for the past couple years I have been tossing around the idea of year-round schooling. I have several home-school friends who school year round. One family literally schools every day, year round, taking short breaks every now and then. Another family does five weeks on, three weeks off. Or maybe it is five on, two off....? At any rate, the mother told me that it works out perfectly for taking Thanksgiving/Christmas/Spring breaks.

Now here are my thoughts on why I think this "might" work for our family.

1. After about 6 weeks of summer, we get BORED. We love the summer, playing outside constantly, not a tight schedule, free to go when we want to do something....but we LOVE the structure of our school days. 
2. This would allow us to not feel constricted by the public schools' idea of what the school year should be. And since we home-school, why not?
3. It would give us a little catch up time for those of my children who struggle in certain areas. 
4. If I planned it right, we wouldn't be doing much different than what we are doing now, just longer breaks and schooling during the summer for a couple times.

So I am curious as to what your family does! Do you follow a "normal" schedule or do you school year round?

Music Teachers Rock!

We are a very musical family! I wouldn't say that we are pretty to listen to...LOL But we love music! My hubby plays the trumpet and the mandolin. I play the clarinet, a spot of piano and the autoharp. My girls are all taking piano lessons and my oldest also plays the cello. My son bangs things together at this point and pretends to play his "guitar" made out of cardboard and rubber bands!


If there is one thing we ALL love to do, it is sing! Love, love, love! Give us a few minutes in the car or van and pretty soon, someone starts singing a song or requesting the CD player or radio to be turned on so we can sing along! I love hearing my girls humming and singing as they do their chores around the house, doing schoolwork or playing. I don't know if they even realize they are singing sometimes!


A few years ago, our oldest girls were taking classes out of a local music store/community. However, the classes were so expensive, that after a year we could no longer afford them. In the past couple years we have had different people from church helping out with their music education, which was a blessing!  We are a very  musically inclined family and we are heavily involved in the music ministry at church. After a lot of prayer,we felt that we needed to find a teacher who could give weekly lessons that were affordable. It took about 6-9 months, but we have been incredibly blessed with a wonderful teacher who is just a dear! She takes the time to make sure each child is learning at their pace and is very heavy on Music Theory, which was something that was a requirement for us when looking for a teacher. We are so grateful for our piano teacher! Thank you, Miss Amy!!! You ROCK!

Miss Amy and Bob

Testing to see if I can update successfully from my phone! Just ignore this post!

Here I go...

My dear husband has been after me for some time to take the homeschooling page I do on Facebook and turn it into a blog. I have been hesitant to do this because I have started blogs in the past, only to stop when things get busy. However, I will certainly make an attempt and see where it goes! 

So first I will tell you about the experience I have in homeschooling. I was home schooled myself from 6th grade till I graduated High School. I loved the experience and the extra time with my family. It encouraged my childhood dream of being a wife and mother! The extra training I received by being home schooled myself has helped me to be a better keeper of the home now. My mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when I was around 12. Our family was forced to start doing things at home that we had never had to do cause mom always did it for us! Mom took that time to teach and train us to be the independent adults that we became. Homeschooling and Multiple Sclerosis brought our family much closer together with the help of the Lord. 

Jump to present day: We have been homeschooling since our oldest was in Preschool! I know, I couldn't wait to get started. At first my husband was not in favor of it. But after a LOT of prayer on my part in secret, as well as a couple conversations we had, we decided to take it a year at a time. We have now been homeschooling for 8 years. 

I am homeschooling four of our five children. They are, as follows (complete with nicknames): Mac in 6th grade, George in 4th grade, Fred in 1st grade and Bob in Kindergarten. We also have Lil Mr who is currently going to Early Head Start. He has special needs and this has been a good fit for him at the moment. Lord Willing, we will be homeschooling him as well! 

Here are a few pics of a school day around our house:

Little Mr (3yo)

Bob (Kindergarten, 6yo)

Fred (First Grade, 7yo)

George (Fourth Grade, almost 10)

My planning book. I did not always use one. Didn't need to. But since last year when I added the fourth child, I find it is alot less stress to plan out a month ahead. It's all in pencil!!! We like to be flexible!

Mac (Sixth Grade, almost 12)

So here is my humble start in blogging about homeschooling. If you like what you see, please become a follower and recommend me to your friends!

Thank you and God bless,

Heidi