Allen Academy

This week we officially started our venture in to home schooling - dum dum dum.... Yes we've been doing a classical homeschool once a week since september and listening to the cd's through out the week but we've just been taking it easy and eeeaaasing in to it all. Especially with having a new baby in September I didn't want to give myself goals that I couldn't attain. We've just been lucky to all get out of the door and dressed most of the time :) However, I decided that in January I was going to start having a "plan" for the week and goals of things to get accomplished. I decided to name our little school - Allen Academy.

I must say I have kind of been dreading it just because I wasn't sure how to do this with three kids at three different levels but I finally decided to just go with where James was at and let the others do what they can do or want to do with us. I have been pleasantly surprised at both myself and my children. We only have about an hour of "work" planned each day (I use that word very lightly) but they look forward to seeing what fun thing I have planned - because I am oh so fun! ha! Luckily there are TONS of amazing resources on line you can find for FREE where I am getting lots of my ideas. I'm not going to make this blog all about our homeschooling adventures but just wanted to get day one on the books :) I have been to tons and tons of homeschooling blogs and most of them freaked me out even more and made me feel like I had to run out and get a laminator and a chalk board and lots of fun activities for my kids - so if you've come across any of those as well know that is NOT what Allen Academy is like - I'm not a preschool for goodness sake! We are having fun though and along side my "plans" for the day we are still just doing lots of playing and "hands on" learning with fun trips like the grocery story - ha! They are still only 4, 3, and 2 so we haven't hit chemistry yet :) When we decided homeschool was the route we felt the Lord was leading us to take I had to decide to only take it one day - or maybe one week at a time other wise I would be too overwhelmed and might send them to the first school I saw on the side of the road :) So that is what we are doing. This week we focused on the letter A, alligators, rectangles, xylophones, numbers, coloring, tracing, puppet making - i can't remember what else.

Here' s some fun pics from our week-
Practicing our letters in shaving cream

Gracie learning her letters too :)

I feel like we're late to this party and EVERYONE does this but we just started making smoothies and adding lots of veggies to them and the kids are EATING.THEM.UP! I feel like super mom because my kids are actually getting greens in their diet daily! oh, and today we were at the store and they were pushing this new "juice" which is just fruit and veggies juiced and sold - nothing added to it - just like you can make at home if you have a juicer and the lady let each of the kids try it - they were flavors like beet and lemongrass, carrot and lemon ect. - of course the Allen crew slurped them down! The lady was kind of shocked - I guess a lot of kids don't like it. I told her, "look, these kids rarely get juice so they think this is a HUGE treat and they have no idea they are drinking beet and lemongrass - juice is juice to them - reason number I don't know what why we don't give our kids juice as a staple! Now they can drink beet juice to their hearts content :)

Of course we have reading time at Allen Academy - well, usually I'm the one reading but they love to get thier books out and "read" too! LOVE IT!

Let's not forget the littlest Allen - while he's not enrolled in Allen Academy yet he's still hangin' around having fun too! This is his only friend right now - Ali - her mom is one of my closest friends and her older brother Zach is one of James and John-Mark's FAVORITE friends too! She is only about 4 weeks younger than Benjamin - isn't she beauiful - and look at all that hair!!!

Our little sunshine:)

I obvioulsy don't have the greatest camera but I tried to snag some pics of what our house is like about 5pm each day - it's like a bell rings and the boys hear "Let's get ready to rumble!!!"

Gracie wanted to cheese for the picture :)You can't tell it but John-Mark is belly laughing! BOYS! (JM is wearing his buzz lightyear costume over his Christmas pj's - hard to tell what he was wearing!)

I am SOOOOO ready for the time to change back so I can send them outside for their fight times!!
This last picture is pretty random but so stinkin' cute! The boys now prefer boxer briefs so these are little size 4 toddler boxer briefs - they make me laugh every time I fold the laundry. My little boys are growing up...