February Recap

My February focus is

Strengthen our Homeschool

Part of the reason I picked this for February is that it won't take as much time and, considering I'm just getting started, I only have a half of a month to focus on it!  I also feel that if we can stay in our established routines this month now that we have missed 2 weeks of school (yes we did!! The weather has not been our friend - but it has brought extra friends to our house making school hard to do!!) that we will end the month on schedule, if not ahead of schedule. 

1. Make sure we are doing Math Minute daily, We did incorporate this is often as possible. I find that even though the boys have two hours a day to do independent work, they don't get through everything I want them too! 

2. Accomplishing our IXL goals weekly (IXL is a math/reading practice program the boys are required to do). We are trying but the boys aren't enjoying this anymore so it is becoming a challenge to get them to do it without a battle. 

3. Focus on cursive writing - the goal is to be writing in cursive by the end of May. This is part of our daily independent work. 

4. Go to the shelter and read at least once this month to the Shelter animals We never did this - between weather, snow days and just keeping up with school, there wasn't a day to do this during February. 

5. Look at some other options for homeschooling next year - do we need to change from Connections Academy?  It's the time of year to re-evaluate what we are doing. I have been doing some research and haven't made a decision about next year yet.  

6. Get the boys reading daily - I have the books and they need to read daily! YES!  I did a facebook post and got lots of great ideas.  I ordered four books and the boys have started reading. 

7. Josh needs to finish 1 Social Studies project and Nate has 4 reading journals he has to complete - I want to be on schedule with these extra projects. Josh picked both his Social Studies project and his Michigan History project, neither of which we could start this month as we aren't that far into the chapters yet.  Nate has completed the one journal related to the story he has read - he hasn't read the other three stories yet. 

Even though that's my main focus, I also have some other goals to work on as well. 

1. Add exercise to our daily schedule - we started this and then the horrible winter weather hit and "locked us in" thanks to bitter cold, lots of snow and then ice, upon ice, upon ice. We've still been frozen in this month.  Maybe March will be better!

2. The basement is always on my list.  I just have to do 15 minutes a day - that's my plan.  I know from past experience that 15 minutes a day = lots of work done.  I had good goals and then it was March HA!

3. Have a movie night at home.  We did this on this past Sunday! 

4. Find one activity to do this month as a family - my father-in-law gave us money to take the boys out to do something as a Christmas gift so we are tossing around a few ideas for that.  There is also a place called "Cat Cafe" that I think the boys would enjoy that is on my radar. We had a few plans but due to weather they didn't happen yet. 

5. Update my Holiday Journal - Superbowl and Valentines Day

6. Scrapbooking - my goal is to order pictures to finish up 2014; and then order January 2019 photos.  I also want to scrapbook both December 2014 and January 2019.  The photos are ordered! 

7. Find my song to sing at church at the end of April. 

8. Read - I'll have a book club book, a Baker Book House book club list and just general reading. I'm reading :-)  Yes, yes, yes! 

9. Plan Darryl's birthday (it's coming up quickly!) Done! 

10. Work on the idea of what class I want to teach at the co-op in the fall. I've picked it - The 13 Colonies.  Now to just plan it out.  I'm also looking at Space - if I want to teach two. 

11. Totally 100% clean the playroom (I have a motto of "organize one thing" to accomplish each month). I'd like to empty the playroom, clean the carpet, clean everything else, and then reorganize and put things back neatly. This is done :-)  (I didn't clean the carpet . . .I'll wait until I'm ready to clean the living room carpet too.) 

12. Purchase 2 items for our grinch calendar in December - I'm trying to get ahead. Nope!

13. Shipt - try to into shipt shopping to earn extra income.  It's hard to get into it started. The weather has really derailed this plan. 

14. Schedule my dental cleaning Yes!  I finally got this scheduled. 

15. Make a list of summer clothing items the boys need so we can get ahead of the game.

16. Practice piano - pick one or two songs to work on until I can play them well. 

17. Plan ahead for St. Patrick's Day - find the annual shirts and plan activities

18. Set up my 2019 Scrapbooking file folders Done. 

19. Incorporate Flylady routines.