Back to school!

It's that time of year when we get back into our daily grind and say goodbye summer and hello school! I have decided to change our homeschool schedule a bit and follow more of a year around school system. I read an article in a homeschool magazine that totally changed my thinking about our school schedule. I loved it so much that I am going to initiate it with our homeschool schedule! It is taken from the biblical idea of working hard for 6 days and having a sabbath rest on the 7th day but instead of days we will do weeks. We will work hard for 6 weeks and then enjoy a 1 week Sabbath break. We will school for a total of 36 weeks (the normal length of a school year) and this will also allow us to take time off at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Birthdays, Spring, and an extended 4 week break at summer. I am so excited about this because I know I have it in me to work hard for 6 weeks (and so do the kids) knowing that we get a week off after working so hard.

So we officially start our homeschool year on Monday but we had an open house of sorts this past week so the kids could look over their curriculum and see what our year will look like.
For the open house we made our traditional "all about me" magazine art sheets. We did this at the beginning of last school year and we really had fun with it. It will be great to see how the things we like change over the years. If you want a close up of what they came up with, just click on the picture for a bigger view. This year we added a new twist where each of us also had to find one thing out of a magazine that reminds us of each other. For example, Jadon had to find one thing for me, for his sister and for his brother that represents that person or what that person may like. It was fun to see what everyone came up with.





Here are the delicious brownies we made and the best part, licking the bowl!



During our open house I let each of the kids choose one thing they wanted to do, Anna chose show and tell, Camden picked charades, Jadon picked an art project that he led us in. It sure was fun. And only in homeschool could you bring your knife collection to show and tell!
Annagrace was showing her goodies she got from the dentist and telling us about her TWO loose teeth.

Jadon showed us Spike.

Camden showed us each. one. of. his. knives. Let's just say it took a while!

The kids working on a fun assignment.




And then every Friday our kids will be attending Eagle Ridge enrichment program where they will be taking some fun classes! The boys are enrolled in P.E. Science, Music, Technology, Origami, Lego machines, Author Author, and Art. Anna is in a Kinder class where they will be doing different unit studies all year. The kids had their first day of school there on Friday and they LOVED it! Here they are right before school. And I still can't believe our baby is a Kindergartner and she has two loose teeth! Where has the time gone? Seriously, it seems like just yesterday we were meeting her for the first time with her wild black hair and sweetest little smile that melted this mommy's heart!


I am especially excited to get this school year started because of all that we will be doing this year. We have been praying for over a year now that God would lead us in the direction we need to go to help Camden with his learning challenges/blocks. After working with him this past school year and seeing little progress, I kept coming back to the word "block" and just felt Camden had some sort of block that was preventing him from finding reading and writing easy. It was such a struggle for him despite his hard work and good attitude. I kept asking God to please lead us to some answers and help for Camden. And of course God did just that! God is so faithful and He showed up in ways that have brought us so much hope and excitement in getting Camden the help he needs. I stumbled onto a website right before the homeschool convention, it was this website and the moment I clicked on it I totally connected with so many things I saw and the term "blocked learning gates" really popped out. I felt like the answers we had been searching for were staring right back at me. And then if this wasn't enough I found out that Dianne Craft would be speaking at the Phoenix homeschool convention at the end of July which we were already signed up for. So fast forward to convention, we sat through Dianne's workshops and knew her ideas and therapies would be our answer to helping Camden be successful in his studies and become the fluent reader and writer that we know he can be. We will be doing a private consultation with Dianne Craft at the end of October to see exactly what is going on with Camden, what learning gates are blocked and what therapies we can use to help him. The great thing is that the consultation is affordable and I can carry out the therapies on my own right here in our own house. I already have what I need to get started and will begin these reading and writing therapies on Monday. This will make for a very busy year but it will all be worth it! The other interesting aspect to all this is that we have learned that Camden is a right brain learner and has a hard time learning in the "normal" left brain ways. We live in a left brain world and our schools teach to the left brained kids. Most right brainers adapt to the left brain ways but there are some kids who have a very hard time making that crossover in their brain and Camden falls into that category. Not only will we be doing the reading/writing therapies but I will also be doing something called brain integration therapy to help open up the pathways between his right and left brain. These are simple exercises that cross the mid line. I will teach Camden to learn skills to use his brain the way God made him but also open up his learning gates that are blocked. I cannot wait to get started and I also can't wait to see Camden make some progress! I will celebrate on cloud nine the day I hear Camden read a book from cover to cover with ease. I just can't wait!!!!!
This is just a brief synopsis of what we will have going on so if you are interested in learning more I would be more than happy to explain it in detail because I realize this is probably a bit confusing.

And I can't leave this post without talking about Annagrace and her two favorite things! Both are in this picture. Her rubber band fun shaped bracelets and her kitty cat named Kitty Kitty. Apparently the bracelets are a new fashion trend and everyone seems to be wearing them. I'm not sure if most kids where ALL of theirs at the same time but our Anna does and she has a total of 36! They are $1 a packet at Fry's and come with a dozen per pack. Kitty is usually within Anna's reach at all times and has become quite the companion for her. She simply calls her Kitty Kitty.

And since I talked about two out of our three kids I have to brag for a second about Jadon. He has been working hard on getting open water scuba certified. He just passed his third written test with a 90%. It is the same test and reading materials that adults do when they get open water certified so we are very proud of him for studying and working hard. He has one more test and then the final exam and then he will get to start on his dives. It will be quite the accomplishment when it is all said and done!

Well that's all folks! Thanks for sticking around and reading about the happenings at the Ray house.