2015 Bucket List

 

2015 Bucket List

I'm not one that makes New Years resolutions, but I do try to have a few things to focus on each year.
One year I decided I was going to focus on my patience, another year was to read more, and often I had a long list of things I wished to work on throughout the year. This year, I have decided I wanted a "Bucket List" of sorts for the upcoming year. Here it goes... (in no particular order)

1) More time outdoors
 Being in Colorado there are only handful of days throughout the year that are either too hot or too cold to go outside.

2) Truly embrace and live the Unschooling life
I feel that this is exactly what we all need at the moment. We all love the freedom to explore as the desire hits. I have very curious and creative children and I want for them to have this time to follow what they are interested in and to truly enjoy being a child and exploring the world around them.

3) More time with family and friends
I hope to have family and friends over for dinner each month and to connect with them for fun outings. We are a very social and busy family but we have not been able to spend as much time with everyone as we have hoped.

4) Get back to church weekly
With so much stuff going on the last few months, and after caring for and losing hubby's dad this fall, we have been unable to make it to church weekly.

5) Have fun
This one is pretty simple. I want us all to have fun each day.

6) Write letters to family, friends, and pen-pals.
Even though we are going to try this unschooling thing, I want to have a strong focus on writing. The kids each have pen-pals and plenty of family and friends to write to, as do I. Everyone loves getting mail and personal letters are something we all can treasure for many years to come.

7) Date night
Hubby and I have not been able to get out on a date night in a very long time. We do make sure to have some time together each night after the kids have gone to bed, but we need to get back to having some time away just the two of us. We also want to get back into having date nights with the kids. Nothing fancy, but we used to take turns having a date night with one child at a time. Daddy would take one of the kids out to get a hamburger and go do something fun, or I would do the same, and at times hubby and I would take one child and have some time with all three of us together. The kids really enjoy and look forward to these date nights, even if it was just a picnic and time at the park. It's special time just for them.

8) Make time for and enjoy my hobbies
Hobbies have taken a back seat for a long time and I miss them terribly. I enjoy sewing and have quite a few projects I need to finish and things I wish to make for my family and friends. I hope to make time, even if it's just one day a month, to sew.
Photography is one of my biggest loves. I have started to get my business going a few times and have to let it go each time as the priorities changed. Family and homeschooling comes first, but this year I plan to just enjoy my photography and not try to make it a "job" as I had in the past. The time for my business will come when it meant to, so for now I am just going to dust off the camera, and myself, and enjoy doing what I love and "gift" my love to friends, family, and anyone else willing to be on the other end of the camera.

9) Clean out!
This one will take a lot of time and work on my part to get the family on board. We have way too much stuff and I would love to simplify by clearing out what we don't need and won't use.
I'd love to sell everything, move into an RV and travel for a year or two, but convincing hubby is going to be incredibly difficult.

10) Go camping more often, and take a family vacation
We all, well at least the kids and I, really enjoy camping. We go at least twice a summer but I'd like to take more little camping trips this spring and summer. My kids are most at home in the mountains, around a camp fire, and outdoors with nature. I also hope we can finally take a family vacation this spring. Again, nothing fancy but we hope to take a drive and go visit the Sand Dunes and maybe Mesa Verde. We will camp the entire time, but to just get away and go see something other than our town, will be a great break and fun for us all.


I'm sure that this year goes on, things will change and our bucket list may as well. That's alright with me, as long as we are working to move forward and keeping God, family, and enjoying life as our top priorities, I'll be happy.

What's on your 2015 Bucket List?

Happy New Year to you all.
I wish you all a wonderful New Year with joy, peace and many blessings.

Our unschooling adventure begins...now!

  We have made quite a few changes in our homeschool journey over the years. This is our 9^th year homeschooling and like most we started with a set curriculum and did school-at-home. Each year I would change a few things to fit our needs better and over the years I became more comfortable making my own lesson plans and eventually planned most all the lessons, though I still used a math curriculum for the kids and a few workbooks here and there to fill in or to get ideas from. The last year or two we have moved into a very relaxed unit study style of homeschool and it has done very well for us. Though in the last few months we have felt burned out and in need of a change, and a break. It has been a long rough year and we are now feeling the full effects of this last year.

I have been feeling pulled or maybe lead to make a drastic change in how we homeschool. So after a lot of research, talking with hubby and the kids, and some more research, we are making the move to an unschooling style of homeschool. Though, I haven't figured out all the details of how this will work just yet. I want to embrace the unschooling life as much as I can. I’m afraid it may somewhat limited because of my personality, but we're going to give it a go anyway.

I'm not the best one to explain what unschooling is just yet as I am still researching and trying to figure out exactly how we will do this. I have found a few posts that explains unschooling quite well and a blog that has many wonderful posts on their unschooling adventures. The first link, “Zen Habits Unschooling” will take you to a great post that describes much of what we are looking and hoping for.

Zen Habits Unschooling
The Natural Child Project
Stories of an Unschooling Family

 I realized after deciding to set the curriculum and school books aside for now, that letting go of the traditional way of thinking about learning opens up opportunities in ways I never imagined. The kids and I have talked about what we each would like to do, what projects we plan to work on, and things we'd like to work into our daily routine. I have to say that I was quite happy when the kids all said they wanted to keep our couch cuddles and reading time. We would read together before, but we often ended up putting it off until after our other work and workbook pages were done. Which of course was more often that I liked, and would mean we missed reading together that day. The kids still did their own reading, we just weren't always able to get our family reading done, which I feel should have been a priority. But I’m excited that it is a top priority now.

For a long time, I was too worried about having pages in a workbook filled out or having each and every single math or English lesson done. I was more concerned about making sure my school planner had enough “schoolish” assignments listed and checked off, and making sure we did enough to appease what others would expect a proper homeschool family to do. Even though, I knew it wasn’t what we needed to be doing.

Looking back, it was clear even then that the kids learned far more when we were out on one of our adventures, working on a hands-on activity, spending time with grandparents and great-grandparents, or reading about and exploring places the kids were interested in. Very few if any workbook assignments have been remembered, yet all three kiddos can tell you every detail of each of our adventures and stories we’ve read or activities and projects we’ve done. I’ve known this for a long time and have tried to adjust things as much as I thought was right.  I have come to a point when the tears over a math lesson, or frustration with diagraming a sentence (not necessary until late high school or college level) and stress over concepts one is clearly not ready for, is not acceptable to me anymore. Homeschooling is not something we do between the hours of 8am and 3pm, it truly is a life style and when that lifestyle or something within that lifestyle begins to affect the family harmony and relationships and ability to move forward, a change is needed.

For us, that change is not giving up on homeschooling, it’s taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture. The bigger picture I see, is not a race or competition to finish on top or first. It’s the journey of exploration and learning how to learn and to love learning. This is why we are making the change. I want for my children to have an absolute love of learning and exploring, not a long list of memorized facts or formulas. I want them to be inspired to investigate and dig deeper into what they find interesting. I don’t want them to trudge through what a school book says they are required to do. I want for them to have the freedom to pursue what they wish, and to have the freedom, support, guidance, and resources to do so.

I am making a leap of faith into what I truly feel is right for all of us. Don’t tell, but I’m also keeping my fingers crossed in hopes that this journey I see play out in my head, will be everything I think it will be.

You’re welcome to join us on our journey as we jump in with both feet and see what happens.

          

We're still here...

                  Once again, life has taken over and held my blog hostage. Life, and the need for sleep has kept my blog out of reach and gathering dust. My poor neglected blog.

Well as you can see we are still here. It has been a busy and long few months since I last posted, but we are well and moving forward.

The kiddos keep growing, in spite of my demands to quit growing. Our homeschool journey continues and it on most days is still enjoyed by all. Hubby and I are still loving this crazy thing we call life, and I am looing forward to a fun Christmas with my family and a New Year.

I know this is a very short post, but I will be back soon to update on life and our homeschool journey.

I hope you all are dong well.