Endings

We are finally finished with our Middle Ages unit study.. Well Cheyenne is.. I still have to type up her final questionnaire so that we can add it to her portfolio to show what we have been working on these last 6 weeks! We also am rounding up Charlottes Web on Friday with watching the movie and a short paper on the differences of the two. We took a little longer then planned on the Charlottes Web, as with Dr.s visits our days have been broken.. I am so proud that she has come so far even with all the interruptions  and adjustments. I know that if she were in brick and mortar setting, she'd be behind, not able to just pick up where SHE left off. Vincent is really taking off with preschool lately. At first we were having a really hard time, mainly because his answer for everything being "yeah", it still kind of is, but because of his speech therapy, his language skills are improving and his answers are branching out. My virtual school students are a little behind this week as as I said doctors visits, but the nice thing is we can make up our work over the weekend. 

One of the many reasons I can't wait to be traditionally homeschooling all 6 next year, they can go by their own schedule, not the virtual schools... 

Busy!!

So I will be the first to admit when I first thought of homeschooling I thought of lazy days... You know do a couple of "school" things and then relax, read a book, spend down time with the kids... HOWEVER, our school days have been anything but lazy! First of all, we wake up kinda late, ranging from 8 am to 10 am, (depending on how well we've slept) we don't even start school till 10 - 11 am. Then it seems like a nonstop marathon till the end of our day. Even when "school" ends, we have doctors appointments, (and with 6 kids that alone is a whole nother story, seriously how hard is it to let me schedule more then one kid per visit!) shopping trips, school trips, meals, and more! Believe me when I say I am by no means complaining, as I have always thrived on busy, however, this is a little more then we had originally planned for, and while busy can be good, I worry about the kids and myself not getting enough "downtime". I worry we will burn out... I think a new and improved schedule may be in order. Any suggestions, please let me know in the comments. :)

Typing class for free?

I noticed that my 8th grader Chey was tippy tapping the keys on her keyboard the other day. (you know the scene, where you use 2 fingers for all the keys!) I told her that if she wanted to be able to type faster and not have to keep using her backspace button, she had to learn to type properly. Since we are already doing a sort of PC class, (where she learns internet safety, how to properly use social media and Microsoft, etc..) that I would look around for some type of typing instruction. (no pun intended) And, so the search began. I found a good PC game on eBay fairly cheap, at the last second I ended up paying only 99 cents plus shipping. Which isn't too bad, IF we were setting up my old desktop anytime soon. But, that won't be happening till next year. (I also went a little nutty o eBay with a bunch of games for "next year" will cover hose in a future post) So the search continued... Finally, it dawned on me, HELLO! check Google! Is this not what I am trying to teach my daughter? To look things up? Am I not on Google at least 4-5 times a day? And yet I completely spaced on simply looking up "free typing lessons". What I found was a vast amount of options, however the first thing I clicked on ended up being exactly what I was looking for! The website found is called typingweb.com.  and it is amazing so far!
First of all it is free. not a free trial, but free!! If you don't want ads, you CAN go premium, but nothing really changes if you do... Secondly, this website can be used by both teachers and homeschoolers alike. you sign up and then you can create your "class" once you do that, you add your students, or in the case of homeschoolers, your kids. You assign usernames and passwords for each child and they sign in under their own sign in to use the student portion of the site. You can see what they are doing and how well they are doing in live time.  Right now I have 2 "classes" one is junior high and one is elementary. basically I separated my older kids from the younger ones, however the only one I have set up a user name and password for is my Chey. The other kids won't start until August or September, depending on how much I still like it by then. We start this on Tuesday, I can hardly wait to get her feedback on it, she looked it over and says it looks cool, but we will see how well it fits her needs as time goes. Stay posted and we will let you all know how it goes after she's been on it for a while.

We made it! (through the first week that is...)

Well we have made it through our first week of straight homeschooling our 8th grader. (we pulled her from online schooling over Christmas break) When the other children went "back to school" I allowed her and the littlest one an extra week of break. Mainly because I was still waiting for the rest of our stuff we were going to use to get here, but also because she was so overly stressed from the online school and doing 7-9 hours of schooling 7 days a week, that I felt she just need a little extra time to decompress! Our week was, well, interesting... The middles did fine with starting their new semester (the 1st semester ended on Monday, and the new one started Tuesday, except for the 1st grader who got an extension?)  Chey and I went kind of off schedule on her studies already... We started on American history using Abeka, "America, Land I Love" and after reading the first part  about the Middle Ages, The Reformation, and The Renaissance Era, she had some questions and concerns, (mainly about not fully understanding and about being intimidated by the time period) so now we are doing a few unit studies about the whole time era, broken down into smaller pieces so that not only will she be able to get the concepts one at a time, and they won't be so overwhelming, but also so that we can cover as much of the time periods as we can and still keep it fun, interesting and answer any questions that may still arrive. Needless to say, her American History book is temporarily set aside already, and books from the library are in it's place... already in the first week. And you know what? I love it!! This is why we homeschool, (well one of the MANY reasons!) so that when something sparks in our child's mind, we can go in depth, and explore and show them that this or that is not so scary once you learn! Not every thing goes in the order of a set schedule, sometimes you need to venture out and let yourself learn more! As you can see from our lesson plans for the week we had a fairly busy week going on, without it being too much, however now that is slightly askew. That goes to show that while it is great to have a plan, life doesn't always keep to the letter of any plan, BE FLEXIBLE!!!

 

So we made it through, and I learned something about my beautiful daughter in the process. She has amazing bravery, and when given the freedom to explore, she can and will learn many things, about her world, and about herself!

 

 

 



Introductions!

Hello all! For a long time now, I have tossed around how I would best use this blog... Fist I was thinking of using it as a way to promote coops that I was running on FaceBook. Well I quickly found that co-ops and all the drama that goes along with running them was NOT for me! (Hats off to the mamas who can run those) Then I thought it would be good for promoting our business in yet another way (my husband and I own HunniBunz Cloth, so The Bee Hive kind of fits) but it was when I started homeschooling my youngest and virtual school my other five children, I kept coming back to the idea of writing my own version of a homeschool blog. Especially now that my oldest has joined my youngest as far as regular homeschooling while the middle 4 are still virtual schooling. We are not a conventional homeschooling family. At least currently anyway. Come May, all 6 will be homeschooling with no one doing virtual. And the name more then fit as our homeschool is called the Busy Bee Academy. So now that you know how we came about in this journey to get started, allow me to introduce our "little" family! My name is Melvina.  am a nonconventional homeschooler of 6 fantastic kids and wife to Anthony. Our little busy bees are 14 down to almost 3 (just another couple of weeks!). I also have a very lovely step-daughter who is 13. We started virtual schooling our oldest boy last year when he was accepted into a gifted class that wasn't a good fit for him and therefore not allowing him to reach his full potential. I was already doing a small amount of preschool with my then 1 year old, (as I did with all of them... it truly amazes me that to continue to homeschool didn't dawn on me sooner, but I digress...) so While my other children continued going to school outside the home, I would do preschool with my little one in the morning, and then finish my morning and rest of afternoon with my then 4th grader. Then a little after mid year my oldest daughter begged us not to send her back to "that place" this coming from a child who seriously LOVED school. So we started her at the virtual school and because she was no longer at the local school with the rest of the others, the kids who had to walk the same way as ours got brave. after the first time my 9 year old 2nd grader came home with a black eye and bloody lip, we decided that they all would be learning at home. And so here and so this year we began our journey of sending all the kids to OCA a virtual online public school. My oldest did not do very well. her learning style just was not a good fit with their curriculum and speed so over Christmas break we sent in the papers to the state for our intent to home school and withdrew her... She is doing so much better now!! Well it is very nice to FINALLY have a reason to keep this blog.. Now lets see if I can keep up with it while keeping up with the kiddos!! :)