School Prep

I was feeling extremely overwhelmed & even panicky this afternoon. So much still to do! Plus all of my house chores, the extra organizational projects still waiting & my back log of coupons. To top it all off my helper, Sweet Pea, is away all this week & into next week. Yikes! Thankfully, Dave stepped up & helped to get some of the house chores done. He even made dinner, fed the kids & got them to bed. I was able to have some uninterrupted time to work and am now feeling better because of it. Here is some of what I accomplished:

I printed out 4 of these, one for each child.

I ended up only having 2 clear folders so I used regular ones for the boys' notebooks.

Photo of the cover

I love how each page has Scripture & a place where they can draw and/or write.

Dave, Sweet Pea & I all want to start eating better & lose some weight. I found this chart online. It looks like an easy way to see if we have fufilled our goals of eating from each food group. It can also help us see if we are eating too much from one group.

I want the girls to take more responsibility for keeping track of & completeing their assignments. It is my hope that these pages will help them in this goal.

I will hand these out from time to time when I see them doing an extra good job in both their chores & schoolwork. I plan to have a reward box too.

I am putting together a binder of worksheets, art projects, craft ideas/recipes & coloring pages for Bugsy. I am choosing ones that can have him be an independant as possible.

The boys have been fighting & bickering A LOT. It is driving me crazy. I found this chart online & will use it to help motivate the boys to stop. Maybe I'll even use the ice cream certificates as a reward!

Here is a sample of an art project. He will either color this or I will ahead of time. We'll help him cut it out and then he can glue the ingrediants on & "make" his own pizza. I think he will like this a lot.

I'm making some file folder games for Bugs & Elvis too. This one leans more towards Elvis' age group but I don't see why Bugs couldn't learn. As you can see there are two fish - Even & Odd. The goal is to line up the even coins under the "Even" fish & the odd coins under the "Odd" fish. This way the child learns which numbers are odd & which are even. I colored them myself b/c our color printer is down. Even if it was working color ink is super expensive & not in the budget right now.

I have a bunch more printed out for Bugsy. I still have to color, cut & laminate them. I'm going to have the kids help me color some others and maybe cut them out too.

I almost have all my lesson plans written. Some are for 12 weeks, others about 8 or 9. I have to write Spanish & Bible and then I will be set to start. I have 2 different lesson plan books this year in order to hold all the subjects for all 4 children. I like the set of both of these as they both have big blocks to write in. I bought them both at Target in their dollar section.

I'll be posting more as I get it completed!