A Big New Year

Happy 2013! This is a big new year for the Morgan family. We have been talking about missionary activities nonstop for a few weeks now. We may not be leaving for a good 2 years at least, but there are a lot of things to consider and it will take a lot of time to figure it all out.

Tomorrow morning we will be doing our hour long phone call with the ENGAGE team at Reach Global. We will be getting the nitty gritty details of the application process. There are references to get, forms to fill out, and doctors/specialists to visit. We should also get a chance to ask some important questions. We need to know if we can homeschool and if we are able to bring our doggie.

In the mean time we are diligently picking away at our material possessions  of which there is still a large amount. I think we could almost supply the local thrift store on our own. I am just waiting for them to ask us how we are able to bring a stead supply of baskets headed their way. We bring one to them at least once a month plus continue to make donations at Savers. The majority of our things will not be coming with us. We plan to pack a few totes to store with family, but the rest we will gradually purge.

Another hot topic for us has been The Crazy Elephant Boutique. I spent the whole last year focusing on long term growth with the ultimate goal of making it a career for both myself and Adam. With the looming mission trip, we have been discussing what to do with it. We know that the closer we get to leaving, the more we will have on our plate. It will getting increasingly difficult to continue running the shop. We made the decision to keep it going till we are out of core material. I have 10 yards of the heavy absorb and 10 yards of the medium absorb. It should last 1-1.5 years by my estimation. Also we are streamlining the process by putting all energy and resources into Etsy solely, with the goal being higher short term sales verses our original goal of long term growth. Our customers have nothing to worry about for quite a while as we will still be up and running for a long time.

It sure has been an exciting new year so far...and it is only 3 days in! I will leave you all today with a shot from our new year's eve party. We had a lot of fun playing board and Wii games. We will have to plan to do this again next year.

Minecraft and flying chicken on the Wii.

Finished Classroom Area

We are in the process of making the downstairs room into the Crazy Elephant studio. We created some more space for Jayne's homeschool area and here it is...

There is an extra shelf for some of his school themed toys and sensory bin. The sets of drawers on the sides (CD racks) have different art supplies in them, play-doh, paint, popcicle stick and the like. I think it is going to work out well. Plus it still looks grown up enough to be part of our living room.

Stretch It: Winterizing

Winterizing your house is a great way to save on your heating bills during the winter. That is a must here in Minnesota! There are 3 main things that we have done/do to make our home more efficient during the winter.

Insulate - You can go through and find spots that let in cold all over your house. The main spots for us were lighting fixtures and outlet/switch plates. For the lighting fixtures Adam cut circles out of a clear storage tote that got a crack in it. He drilled out the holes for the wires too. Then he removed (please take great care in this and make sure the power is off, use common sense!) the light fixture or ceiling fan and connected the wires through the plastic circle. This is really a 2 person job by the way. He caulked the circle to the ceiling and reattached the fixture. You can't see it at all and it keeps a considerable amount of cold air from coming in. The switch plates are much easier, though you should still be careful. You will need an exacto knife or something like it, a cutting board, and some light weight foam sheets (the kind that come in packages like the light weight foam around books you order online). Cut out the size you need and the holes in the center and screw it on under the plate. Super easy! Plus both of these were done with recycled materials and little cost.

Vacuum - The vents that is! We have baseboard heaters and last year we found out how to clean them. Take off the faceplate, again, be careful they are sharp. Then vacuum. It is as simple as that. It takes a lot of energy to heat through all that dust and debris. It is an easy way to make you heater more efficient, thus saving money. Take the time to find out how to clean your heating system, it pays off.

Plastic - Plastic sheeting on the windows will not win any beauty contest, but it will save you money. The shrinking kind that we get is relatively inexpensive and it helps a lot. How it works is this...The cold air touches the window and is released into the air. If there is no sheeting, that air is the inside of your house. With sheeting, the air is trapped between the window and the plastic. It has to go through 2 layers to get to the warm air inside. Our sheeting goes on the inside of the window which I prefer as I have to stare at the neighbors house with plastic on the outside for half the year and I can't say that I like the way it looks.

Please take care doing any of the projects I have listed here. They are quite easy to do, but don't do something stupid like get hurt in the process. I would really love to hear what all of you do to winterize your house. We could always stand to make our little house run a little better!

The School Year Routine

Jayne does his sensory bin in his school

Yesterday was the official start of the school year for us. The loosey goosey summer approach has hit its end. I feel really good with the routine that we are starting this fall. We are organized and getting things done this year. It is the first fall that I haven't been working full time hours. My days are all spent here at home working on our home, school, and boutique, plus my daycare kiddo a couple of hours a day. I thought I would share our daily schedule. It varies slightly depending on when Adam works.

7:00a - Wake up and dressed

7:30a - Breakfast

8:00a - Calendar and worksheet time
8:30a - Activities (such as sensory bin and size sorter etc.)
9:00a - Dog walk or indoor exercise depending on weather
9:30a -Story Time
10:00a - Free play hour for Jayne, dishes, chores and cooking for me

11:00a - Lunch time

12:00p - Art time

12:30p - Story time

1:00p - Time to finish unfinished school work and do the day's chore

2:00p - Nap/resting time

3:30p - Games and songs

4:00p - Same as 10:00a

5:00p - Supper

6:00p - Outside play, but sometimes movies or inside play

7:00p - Pick up

7:30p - Bedtime routine for Jayne
8:00p - Jayne goes to bed...it is GROWN UP TIME!

It is pretty well booked and looks like a pretty strict schedule, but it does keep us focused and we are fine with routine changes when things come up. I am excited to see how this new year (lets face it, when school is involved, this is the new year) pans out. I expect many good changes, fun and educational growth to come our way!

Homeschool Fun: Birthday

I thought a birthday themed week would be an excellent build up to Jayne's birthday party, which will be on Sunday. He had so much fun with it too. He loved playing keep the balloons off the floor, classic game. He really liked the birthday pack from Homeschool Creations. His favorite was the find the cake game. We played it every day during school, taking turns and having fun. He did the size cards very well and played with the 3 part cards too. The find the cake game definitely took the cake this week.

Jayne reveals the cake

His sensory bin was very cute too this week. He liked using the tweezers to pick out the beads (cake sprinkles) and tried to pick up everything he could with them. We took this fun little tweezers from his bug collecting kit. It worked out great and it will help him work the muscles he needs to hold a pencil correctly. We somehow ended up not having any art time this week! We have been busy preparing for his birthday party.

Jayne picks up an extra friend

Next week we start school! Not that we haven't been doing school anyway, but this will be full swing. It also means getting into our routine. It is going to be a great way to make sure everything is accomplished and that we make time for the important things like spending time together as a family and getting enough rest.

Hot Dogs by Request

Jayne has developed a facination with hot dogs. He has even been telling us that he wants a hot dog cake for his birthday. While that is unlikely to happen, his request for a hotdog preschool pack is perfectly reasonable. The heat advisory this week has prevented me from getting started, but today is so much cooler and it is making me think that I could get it done over the weekend. I am going to be using clip art for most of the pages. I am also going to do a hand drawn hot dog colors book and a hand drawn color by number page. Right now I am looking at a possible 15 pages. That will be much longer than my first set. I am looking forward to Jayne's hot dog unit because I secretly like hot dogs as much as him...shhh, don't tell anyone!

Homeschool Fun: Learning and Planning

Jayne has learned a lot with Happy and Max this summer. Head of the Class is a great free resource for teaching your kids. It has curriculum up to 8th grade. I found that for preschool, the games are very repetitive. Jayne is starting to get a little more variety now though.

The game he gets the most is a game that shows a word and he has to select the picture that goes with the word. Jayne was already familiar with the sounds of the letters (thank you Leap Frog's Alphabet Factory movie) and that gave me a chance to show him how all the letter sounds work together to make the words. He does some of the words on his own now without my help! He is good with pig, dog, cow, raincoat, and a few others. I haven't noticed that he can pick them out of text yet, but getting them in the game setting is a great start. I think there is a good chance he could be reading somewhat by this time next year.

The other game I have shown here is a math game. He counts how many pictures are shown and touches the correct number. Just to clarify, our computer has a touch screen. He is very good at doing 1-5 and is most of the way there for 6-10. We are also working on the concept of 0.

I definitely recommend using head of the class. It is free, can be used to hone some skills over the summer, and is great when there just isn't time to get things set up. Just click and go.

I also wrote up a trial daily routine for us. My routine leaves too much free time for Jayne and with his less than fantastic behavior recently, I think it is time for more structure in his day. He still has 2 hours a day of free play which is when I can cook and clean. The new routine gives him a lot more face time with me too, which should give him the attention he seems to be lacking. We are going to give it a try tomorrow and see what it is like. We are on vacation next week, so we won't get into the swing of it till the following week. At least we can get a taste tomorrow and see what we like and what isn't going to work.

Getting Ready for Fall

I have been diligently preparing for school this fall. i have nearly 4 months prepared and ready to go. I currently have 2 binders going, but the first still needs 2 weeks inserted and is quite full. So, I may go for 4 binders as they are all laying around the house anyway. I have a sleeve for each of our 39 weeks. The first thing you see is the planner page for the week (courtesy of Homeschool Creations). Then I have any pages that are whole pages, like worksheets. At the back are all the cut out goodies. I also have a box for printed books/card sets that are too bigg to put in the sleeve. I really like having everything in one place. We have nearly all of Jayne's school supplies for the year too. How are you getting ready for school this fall?