Laundry Everywhere!!!!

Throughout the summer, I have been trying so hard to get a routine down for myself and the kids.  When Dad is home, sometimes things get interrupted.  He's been so busy making our house a home and hopefully we'll be able to finish the showers and trim on the main level.  Super excited about that, but we'll see how well it goes.  With that, though, there are things that he needs help with, so "MOOOM" is a common name being called.

One of the things that I've fallen behind in was laundry.  Laundry, laundry, laundry, I could scream!  I NEEDED to find a new system.  Previously, I had a day for each person, but that amounted to several loads of laundry a day that needed to be done.  I quickly found that with Little Elf now in the picture, I need something quicker and more efficient.  So, I changed my game plan.

Monday- whites
Tuesday- Light Colors
Wednesday- Dark Colors
Thursday- Work clothes and Denim
Friday- Sheets and Towels
Saturday- anything else that needs to be done.

Some of these days also consist of diaper laundry.  We cloth diaper every day except Sunday when we go to church and the routine is a little different than the other days.  It gives me a little break and allows me to focus more on keeping the Sabbath day holy instead of worrying if the diapers are sitting a day too long.

I bought a whole bunch of these sorting hampers and I will hopefully get these kids trained to put the appropriate type of clothing into the matching hamper.

So far, it has worked immensely well.  I don't feel so burdened throughout the day to get laundry done!  It's one or two loads a day, we take a break from school or TV and fold laundry together.  That's the trick- family work (Thank you Donna Goff!)  I get my children to work with me, even the 2 year old!  We sort the clothes, fold the clothes, put the clothes away TOGETHER.  I just hope that some day, Curly Girly and Ferdinand learn that laundry isn't as hard as they make it out to be.  Haha!  For me, the stress is gone, the mountain of laundry is gone and it's a lot easier to maintain.  Of course, there are things that are going to need to be washed immediately, but that's the great thing about this system.  If that does ever happen, I just grab something else, like baby clothes, and throw them in the washer with the shirt with blood from a bloody nose on it, or the pillow case with drool spots all over.  I feel like this will continue to be a good thing for us... at least until the kids are big enough to do their own.  Wink, wink!

Work and Play

Whenever Dad is home, we try to spend as much time with him as we can.  The past while, he's been putting up a fence around our yard.

 

 

These kids just love working with their dad.  They even make a few dollars.  I can't wait for the fence to be finished!  It's almost there!

Math-U-See may have lost some spark to it, but it's still working for us.  I just think Curly Girly doesn't like math as much as reading.  She loves using the manipulatives, but if the lessons go longer than 20 minutes, she starts getting really bored, distracted and it takes her a long time to do her worksheets.  So, we try to make the lessons a little shorter, then on to bigger better things like Charlotte's Web.

Little Elf just keeps getting bigger and bigger.  She's learned how to roll over, so most of the time, I find her like this, with a big wet spot on the ground from her drool.  I'm pretty good at remembering to put a blanket under her, but it escaped from my mind this time when I took the picture.  Tummy time is getting better, now that I think she's realized that there's so much to look at and "get to".  She's reaching for toys and loves her rattles.  I love this age!

Home Education Council of America- Family Work

The past couple of weeks, I have been a little "missing in action."  I have 2 reasons for that.  Reason #1- I got really sick with a clogged milk duct.  No bueno.  No fun.  Reason #2- because I was sick, I decided to attend a "Homeschool Bootcamp" from a website called www.hecoa.com.  So what is HECOA?

HECOA is pronounced heck-oh-uh.  It stands for Home Education Council of America.  It is a place you can go to watch webinars and all sorts of different resources for either veteran and/or beginner homeschoolers.  They have a wealth of information.  I have a basic membership, which means that I can only watch the webinars live and sometimes they offer a 24-hour replay window.  If I want to go back and see all of them, I'd have to purchase a higher level membership.

They hosted an "Ultimate Homeschool Bootcamp" the past couple weeks.  The awesome thing was that I could watch it from my home computer or iPad.  I didn't have to get any babysitters, it was all from the comfort of my own home.  This bootcamp was mostly geared towards the newbie homeschooling moms/dads.  We are almost complete with our 2nd year of homeschool and I still consider myself "new."

One of the ladies who spoke was named Donna Goff.  She talked a lot about family life and the Charlotte Mason method of homeschool.  I was completely drawn to how she taught.  She referred back to the day of when you had to milk your cows every morning, get the eggs from the chickens, grow your own produce, make your own cheese, yogurt, bread and all these things that we take advantage of whenever we go to the grocery store.  She said there is a disconnect sometimes between generations.  Our generation "lacks" the ability to do family work.  Family work is the ability to guide children to do the hard things in the home.  Cleaning, chores, WORK.  Parents show their kids once, and then expect the child to do it perfectly from that time forward.  Children are not mimi-adults.  They require time, patience, and a good role model.

When she talked about family work, I said to myself, "that's something I want to do."  Many times, and I know I have fallen under this category, we expect our 4 year old to do something that we have only shown them what to do once.  For example, put their laundry away.  We sort the clothes, we fold them, and then we put them into their drawers.  Well, I asked Ferdinand to put his clothes away, expecting him to neatly put them into the drawer.  What happened later, he had put his pants in his sister's pants drawer, and put mismatched socks into his sock drawer.  What Donna Goff talks about is that we are creatures of habit.  Work WITH your children, day after day, week after week, month after month, and they will, out of habit, do things correctly, the way you showed them.  It takes consistency, and it may take years for them to get it down, but isn't that was parenting is?  It's not just babysitting on a daily basis.  Parenting is love, year in and year out, guidance, nurture, cultivating, etc.  You're goal is to get them ready for society, for life, and success.  And you only have about 18 years to do it.  Start when they are young.

I don't know why this was so hard to understand before.  I was and am so used to doing things myself.  So, starting yesterday, we did laundry together, we cleaned rooms together and we scrubbed toilets together.  I love this new way of "homeschool."  It's not just academics that I teach.  It's teaching my children how to conquer the hard things and enjoy family life.  Yes, it was hard to take a few more minutes to guide them through the process, but teaching them now will save me a lot of headache and heartache later on.

So, Donna Goff, thank you for your webinar session.  From now on, our "home-ec" class will consist of working together, no matter the age, and creating good habits of cleanliness and a sense of pride and responsibility in our family work.