Moment of Library Clarity

Finally, finally. I've been praying for the answer to organizing our books ~ our many, many books. Grouping by author was absolutely useless, as was grouping alphabetically by title. I even looked into several computer programs designed to help me keep organized, but they just weren't the right fit for our situation. It finally dawned on me to organize them as we use them: by relevant time period! Oh, what a relief.

I put the system in place a couple of months ago while Mike was off from work to help wrangle the kids, and it was a chore getting everything in order! I went through every book and noted on the front flap in which section it belongs. But I'm so glad I did it ~ it is working wonderfully. For the first time in years, I can walk to any of our numerous shelves, find the correctly labeled section, and quickly pull out a certain book. So nice.

We have biographies, history, and historical fiction all organized by historical period. We also have several shelves devoted to what we call "Our World." That can include books about cultures, maps, weather, insects, how things are made, and all kinds of other science materials. Finally, we have several shelves for what we call "Story Books" that hold all the fiction, readers, and just-for-fun materials that don't really fit any other category.

This has been such a blessing, since we are a Charlotte Mason family, and we mainly use books as they correlate to our history studies. When the kids pull a book on their own to read, they drop it in a basket in the school room when they are finished. HW is responsible every day (it's in his ChorePack) to shelve books from that basket. For the most part he does a good job of it, with just a little follow-up from me.

We do have one problem, though. We still, even after a ruthless culling, own too many books. What a nice problem to have, and we feel very blessed, but it is still a problem. Another paring down is in order, and I'm going to have to get tough about it. Until that happens, though, I'll just ignore that stack on the floor, and enjoy my neat and tidy shelves.

Hooray for modest swimsuits!

How beautifully modest are my two sweet girls in their new swimsuits?

I am so happy we were able to get these suits so R and S can enjoy swimming and still be modest. They love them, the suits are very comfortable, and their Daddy is very pleased. I'm so happy we found Simply Modest Swimwear and we feel very blessed to be able to order suits from them for the first time. They also sell patterns and fabric, so we might try sewing our own when these are outgrown. The service was really great, too.

What Doesn't Work for Me

Instead of making resolutions (who needs that kind of pressure?) I've decided to write down some of the things that don't work for me and my family, and then happily let those things go.  These are things I've felt like I ought to be doing, but haven't found a way to make them work for us. So here is my list of things I'm gladly letting go in 2011:

Extreme couponing doesn't work for me. If I happen to already have a coupon handy (or there is one hanging in the store right next to the item), and if I was planning to buy the item anyway, I'll gladly use that coupon. But I don't have time to clip coupons, carry them around in my purse, sort out the 39 that expired yesterday, then forget to use the remaining 3 when I get to the checkout. I just don't need that kind of aggravation. I buy store brands when they are good, buy in bulk when possible, and I don't buy convenience foods. I don't get baskets full of free groceries like the good couponers do, but it's a fair trade off. With the time I don't coupon I can play a game of scrabble with the kids.

Rebate programs do not work for me either. Take the aforementioned aggravation, multiply it by 4387, then quadruple it. I do not want to be required to shop at certain places within a certain time period in order to use certain points on certain brand items of a certain size. Rebates are so not for me.

Store-hopping also does not work. I know that some moms save lots of money by checking out circulars, comparing prices, making lists, then going from store to store to pick up the items that are the best deal that week. Since we live in the country, gas is too expensive to make that kind of shopping all over town worthwhile. Also, don't forget about the aggravation factor I keep mentioning. Do we see a theme here? I don't really like going to even one store, so I certainly don't want to go to several just to get the weekly groceries.

Menu planning also is not working right now. It actually used to work great for us. I planned four weeks of menus down to the side dishes, and we shopped from those lists and cooked and ate from those lists faithfully. But then we challenged ourselves to eat what we grow, and the menu plans went out the window. With eating off the land, my available ingredients change from day to day, therefore menu plans just don't fit our family. It's been a little frustrating trying to keep up with the meals without a good plan, but my sous-chef R and I do seem to be getting better at it every day. And I'm still hopeful we can come up with some sort of general, seasonal plan that will help in this area.

Beautiful Ethiopian Doll

All you mamas of beauties born in Ethiopia have to check out this gorgeous doll from Target! I can't wait for Baby S to have one. Isn't she lovely?

Start Them Young

I love the Managers of Their Chores system for our family. We tweaked it a bit to make it work for us, and we are decidedly less disciplined than the lovely family that wrote the book on it. But, it does work very well for us to require the kids to use their ChorePacks daily to keep our house from becoming a pit! I've found it helps my attitude tremendously for the kids to start the day by tidying and wiping things down. It's certainly no showplace, but it's world's better than it was before we instituted ChorePacks. 

Here is Baby S and Big Sister R doing their very favorite chore: cleaning the front glass door. R sprays the cleaner on the outside and Baby S wipes the inside with a cloth diaper just as hard as she can, copying her big Sissy! It is so cute, and it tickles them both to do that chore together each morning. Baby S keeps that door smudged up watching the birds and goats and cows outside, so it needs that good wipe down every day. You can never start them too young!

Librivox

We discovered a great source for free audio recordings of books in the public domain ~ Librivox Recordings. We constantly have read-alouds going in our family, and hubby's and my voices get pretty worn out. So every once in a while we choose a work that is recorded, and we all get to listen together. We listened to The Railway Children last year, and are now enjoying Robin Hood from Librivox. Later this year we'll use the Librivox recordings of Pinocchio and Pilgrim's Progress by Bunyan. What a blessing!

Pin Prints

We teach our children American Sign Language beginning when they are babies. It's a beautiful language, and it's great to be able to minister to someone if you know ASL. The kids already have a large vocabulary of signs, and now we are working on improving their speed and their finger-spelling ability.


We just discovered that this pin print toy is an awesome tool for practicing sign in a super sensory way! The letter signs look very cool when pressed into the pins, and you can really feel your hand position while you see it displayed at the same time. It's an awesome way to reinforce proper letter formations.


This is great for a child who is learning letters and shapes, too. You can press refrigerator magnet letters into the pins for a 3D effect, or use puzzle pieces or cookie cutters, or shape sorter toys to press out the shapes. The possibilities are endless.

Smart Bib Tip

Every time I do baby S's hair I have to really, really saturate it before I detangle. And it takes a while for the water and product to soak into her hair. So, she always ends up with drips of conditioner and water running down her back. I've tried tucking a cloth into the neck of her shirt, but that usually doesn't stay tucked with all the wiggling. And then sometimes I detangle with her shirt off, in front of the wood stove, so there is nowhere to tuck a cloth.

Yesterday I sat down for S's Hair Time and commented on how I hate for those cold drips to bother her. I was contemplating rigging something with clothes pins, but I knew baby S wouldn't leave those alone for long. Hmmmm.

Big sissy R brought me a bib and said, "Why don't you just put this on her backwards?"

Voila! Works like a charm. Thanks for the great idea, Sissy. Baby S thanks you, too!

Precious Dolls

I've been searching for months for a soft, loveable African American baby doll in the stores. No luck. But, I finally located a great website and ordered her very first baby dolls a few weeks ago from The Pattycake Doll Company. I love them!

They are adorable and so soft and snuggly. Plus, they are washable and the Velour Lovey Doll and the Lil Hugs Doll are just the perfect small size for my little doll baby to love and hug. Wanted to pass along the link in case other moms are searching for that perfect doll.

Bright Idea

In the past 6 years of home schooling I've tried lots of tools, tips, and techniques to help me keep our work on track, stay organized, and work efficiently. I've looked for something inexpensive, completely customizable, easy to use, intuitive, and perfectly suited to our family, our schedule, my teaching style, and the learning styles of all 3 of my kids. Is that asking too much? Perhaps, because I've never found such a thing. 

Until now.

In August I signed up for a trial period to use the CM Organizer from Simply Charlotte Mason and I am hooked. This has been life-changing for this home school mom, friends! 

The monthly fee kept me from trying the CM Organizer when I first discovered it. Boy, was that a mistake. It costs $9.95 per month.  Note to frugal self: some things are totally worth 10 bucks. 

The CM Organizer truly is completely customizable. I set it up for our family at the start, and now I can organize all our books and curricula according to each child, or each subject, or each day. I can lump together all the things we study as a family, or I can see each item that each child works on independently, right down to the page they are on. I can easily schedule any of the 1500 resources they have already entered into the system at any time. Or I can enter a limitless number of my own selected resources for school. The CM Organizer saves all that info for me and lets me manipulate anything into our school schedules any time I want to. Now that's customization.

I will admit that when I took my trial run with the CM Organizer, for a fleeting moment I thought it was just going to take too much time to set it up. After all, I'm a busy mama, you know? But after a reality check, I realized that with several hours of uninterrupted time (that means Daddy took the kids outside to play one Saturday and no one was allowed back in for popscicles or bandaids) I was able to get the bones of the system ready to go for our family. 

Since the initial set-up, I usually spend about one hour per week adding resources, checking off our progress, or tweaking the CM Organizer.  What a difference! I used to spend about 45 minutes per night with a giant stack of books and notepads, writing out lesson plans and assignment sheets for the next day. In addition, every couple of weeks I used to have to sit down, spread everything out again, and review where we were in our big picture plan. Then I had to readjust everything because we were ahead in some subjects and behind in others. Then I had to figure out and write down what was coming up in the next couple of weeks. Then I had to put all my plans into a notebook and constantly shuffle, mark off, add to, etc. Well, not anymore. The CM Organizer keeps my books and other resources in a queue, so when we finish one the next one pops up in our plan. Genius!  I LOVE not have having that late evening chore of planning and organizing our resources staring me in the face every night. 

Just like anything new, you have to use it a bit to learn how to do it quickly. But once you figure it out it becomes very quick and efficient. It took me a couple of weeks of using it to really get the hang of it, and now I'm very fast at updating our progress or entering new goals or new resources. 

One of the best features of the CM Organizer is that it keeps track of everything we do. I love that! I can instantly create reports that show all we've done for the week, or the month, or the school year, or the calendar year, or for a fixed range of dates. I knew our children were learning well, but I never realized how much material we cover here at Pecan Bluff Home School! I can also print reports for just one student, or for any combination of students, or for the whole family. They can be detailed reports or summaries. Now that the CM Organizer is keeping track of everything for me, I can check our reports any time, and my poor brain doesn't have to keep track of it all anymore. The CM Organizer does it for me. 

I also love the fact that the CM Organizer helps me keep on track with ordering library books that we'll be needing. With the CM Organizer I know what books we have scheduled for each child and for our family, so I go to our library online and put in requests for the books we need. Then we pick them up at all once and I have the books exactly when we need them. Viola!

Perhaps the best feature of using the CM Organizer is how much it's cut down on my paper load. I'll bet I'm not the only home school mom with this problem ~ we have trouble taming the paper creature. Between my notes and lists and schedules, the kids school papers, their art creations, mail, coupons, and other general paper detritus, I constantly battle paper piles. But the CM Organizer tames much of that for me, because my planning lists and daily checklists and assignment sheets are no longer floating around our school/living room.  The CM Organizer is keeping track of it all for me. Freedom!

Can you tell I love this tool? I don't work for the company or anything. I just wanted to share this because it has changed the way I teach this year, and it is such a blessing for our family. If you are a literature-loving home school family like us, this might be just the answer for you, too. 

Bright Idea

We love to play Geography Bingo for school. We've used this set for several years and the kids have learned facts about famous places like Machu Picchu and the Eiffel Tower and Petra. 

We have lots of extra game cards in the box~ the set is made for a classroom of 36 players. 

So I chopped up some of those extras into little playing pieces for another game involving our wall maps.

The playing cards are made of heavy card stock  so they they are sturdy. When cut out, they are just the right size for little fingers.

With a blob of that blue tacky stuff on the back, we had a great new map game that added a whole new dimension to our geography lesson. Now they can tell bits about each landmark, tell me where it is located, and place it on the map.

And since I believe we learn a lot by being surrounded by great information, those little pieces will stay up on the map for a while, to let their locations soak in. Then we'll take them down and play again.

Who said geography is boring?