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!! :)