Inspirations from K and HS convention

I have been away to see my dear friend K and to attend the my 1st homeschooling convention. It was exhausting but I did come away with some what I hope to be good finds for the kids.

For starters, I decided to try Handwriting w/o tears for Prime and J. I also brought a chore system that I'm hoping will help J/Prime develop some good habits. Next week is a short trial week. After that, we will officially start and develop a reward system. I talked to the kids a little bit about what kind of reward they would like. J's response was "play" - she means extra play time. Prime's response was "Chuckie Cheese". :) I also brought few other things, like book recommendations, writing and water coloring paper, whiteboard and whiteboard markers, etc.

But the most important thing I learned from this trip after staying at my dear friend K's house was I need to be more organized esp. with regard to all the homeschooling material. The first thing I'm doing is taking my previous home office back and storing all my homeschooling stuff there. :) This will give all the homeschooling material a central home. Hubby said he is being "evicted" and got to moving his stuff out right away. Something along similar line is the advice K's hubby D told me about: everything needs to have a proper place. Before buying anything, think about where to put it. I hope I will remember it for a long time. So my first order is to organize my homeschooling material. Then the craft supplies (drawers), and then the kids' toys.

I also realized to be organized, you do need to spend the $ to buy the necessary baskets, containers, shelves, etc. This will also be a good homeschool lesson for the kids, that everything need to have its proper place. And label, label, label!

So big thanks goes to K and D for inspiring me to be organized and for their wonderful hospitality. Your house was beautiful!! I might also eat more avocados now and juice carrots. ;)

Now share a few pictures from Florida:


Everything labeled and organized - this is my inspiration. A little tour around the town.


S, G, and J. 3 distinct personalities but all super cute.

"fun day" and making more "plaything"

Today, we went to visit another homeschooling group's monthly "fun day". For this month, first it was open gym and then it was a visit from the police officer to discuss about safety.

I think it was a good experience for the kids as they enjoyed the open gym time and quickly found a little group to play ball with. J also made a friend, R and she was excited about that. She said they wore similar sneakers and that's how they started talking. :)



I also met few other moms and felt very at ease with them. I even got invited to go to this nice lady's house for dinner and fellowship with other Chinese-American homeschoolers. But unfortunately we already have plans. That is so cool as we all speak English (even though some of us can speak Chinese (whether its mandarin, Cantonese or a dialect) but we all prefer to speak in English. However, I'm excited as I will probably be able to go in the summer and meet some other Chinese American homeschoolers. There are not many of us out there at least not where we live and the notion of "homeschooling" is fairly new in to most C-A. Plus most Chinese families have both spouses working.

Later, I decided to check out the newly opened Hobby Lobby near us since I heard they are owned by a Christian family and they donated a large amount to help start the church we go to currently. (Not our particular church, but the 1st one in IL). Anyone, we got a whole bunch of stuff and was like, oh cool, oh fun, oh let's get this and that in the store. The kids were most excited about the wooden man and immediately began drawing on them as soon as we came home. I will let J post her finished product on her little blog.


J cracks up at her own drawing; Prime working hard on his.