A New Adventure Awaits....

     Welcome to the first Blog I have ever had lol. First I would like to introduce myself and tell you a little about what this blog is all about. I am Amanda Cabrera. I am married to the love of my life, Mike. He is one of the greatest men I have ever known. I am a mom to three wonderful children who continuously keep me on my toes (as I typed that my daughter just walked up wanting more things downloaded to her tablet though she is suppose to be in bed...). I do have a thing about putting my children's names out there for everyone to see so I am going to simply have nicknames for them. Hopefully it will make sense but we will see how it goes. This Blog is mainly going to be about homeschooling my babies, though other things I am sure will come about too. I am hoping through this blog I can share my experiences, successes, failures, etc with all of you to help you and you will comment and share your's with me so we can learn from each other and create the best things for our children.

     So my oldest child, and only son, is Baby Boy. He truly is amazing. Baby Boy has one of the biggest hearts of any child I have ever known. He is truly that kid who thinks of everyone. Perfect example was yesterday when he wanted a Coke Float (one of his favorite treats). We have a rule of only one Coke Float a day (we are currently living with my mother so as you can guess at Nannie's house we must have this rule lol). So Baby Boy asked for a Coke Float and I said are you sure you don't want to wait till later to have your float. My son's response was simply this, "No, Mom. I want it now because Aunt Krysten is coming over and it would be rude for me to eat a treat in front of them." Baby Boy is 6 years old and full of energy. Last year we started him in a public school here in town. He went from loving to learn and loving school to crying each night begging not to go and not wanting to have anything to do with school. This is how homeschooling came about in our home (more on that later.) So we worked through Kindergarten over the summer and we are soon about to buy his first grade curriculum. 

     My middle child, JBug, is 4 years old. She isn't so much into the princess stuff as most girls her age. This girl loves horses. At her birthday this year she didn't receive a single baby doll. Everything she got, minus maybe 3 items, was either a horse or something for a toy horse. Her room is done all out in horses all the way to the calendar on her wall (which she loves to carry around and tell you which horses she wants.) Unfortunately for her we don't live on a farm, but we did find out at her birthday party that this girl was born to be raised on a farm. JBug has never been happier than that day we spent for her birthday at a local farm. She did everything from riding horses, milking goats, feeding baby goats, feeding a 1,000 pound pig, and feeding rabbits. Not once did JBug flinch away from an opportunity to try something new at that farm, and to everyone's surprise she was a natural at everything she did. Hopefully, for her sake, we one day get the chance to own a farm for her to grow up on. JBug starts Pre-K this year. I almost started her this year in Kindergarten since we are homeschooling, but as smart as she is, she just doesn't have the patience yet to really do Kindergarten. I figure if she flies through Pre-K, we will just jump into Kindergarten at that point (once again more on that later). 

     My youngest child is Pumpkin. She is 10 months old and is smart and sweet as can be. She is coming into her own personality daily and I can't wait to see more each day. 

     So I decided to start this blog since we have officially decided to be permanent homeschoolers. Our homeschool adventure started when I watched Baby Boy go from a love of learning and loving school to crying every night before school and every morning of school. Needless to say our public school experience was horrible. I had meetings with his teacher every time a report card came out, though these meetings seemed to only push me further and further into the idea of homeschooling. Baby Boy would go to school for 8hrs a day just to come home to need to do at least 2hrs of homework every night IN KINDERGARTEN. I don't know about you, but I found this ridiculous for our Kindergarten students. I quickly found out that what Kindergarten was when I was in school is nothing like today's Kindergarten classes. I was really hopeful that we would love Baby Boy's school as it is the same school I went to and my Kindergarten assistant teacher was still there and she would be right next door to my son's room. I was sadly very disappointed by the time Christmas came. 

     I would say the problems became apparent maybe 2 to 3 months into his school year there. Suddenly Baby Boy started crying about the idea of going to school (a complete opposite of how we started our year.) Then the first report card came and I was amazed by the things they graded him on that I as a parent had no clue they had even attempted teaching him (and some stuff I know they never went over.) Now please understand I was a very involved parent. I was that parent that specifically told the teacher to please let me know if there are any problems or anything I can help with for Baby Boy or for his class. Needless to say, I was shocked at our first parent-teacher meeting. His teacher was going on about Baby Boy not completing his centers and not knowing things that I knew he knew because we would go over it at home. I asked her why I hadn't been contacted prior to this about these issues. I asked her about problems my son was complaining about (such as not being able to ask for help on his worksheets, which btw were the only things that came home in his daily folder.) To my amazement, his teacher confirmed what my son was telling me was right, that these worksheets were like tests in the fact they could not ask for help of any kind once the worksheet was on their table. These worksheets seemed like they were the dominating factor of his day from what I could gather by his daily folder. I am sorry if I offend anyone here but here is my thought on this fact (and this is what I told his teacher): A kindergarten student should always be able to ask for help when they do not understand something! THEY ARE IN KINDERGARTEN! I finally began seeing why my son hated school--he felt inferior, he was intemidated by his teacher (heck I was too), and there was absolutely no fun to be had. I knew I had to do something and quick before my son lost his love for learning to a point school would be a fight for the rest of of his life. Then suddenly another incident pushed me over the edge finally.

     We all know the story of the poor children who lost their lives in the Sandyhook Elementary School shooting. This was the final catalyst for me. My son actually was home from school the week this happened due to having to get his tonsils removed. When it came time for me to send him back I was honestly terrified. Everyday until Christmas break I would drop him off with the thoughts of how some crazy person could come in this school and take my child away from me forever. I didn't immediately pull Baby Boy out. I wrote our Superintendent asking what our schools were doing to protect our children from an awful event like this (were we doing drills, did the children know what to do, etc). I received NO response. I checked my email daily and checked our county and school's websites to see if maybe he would send out some type of mass response as I figured many parents were asking the same thing I was asking--nope NOTHING. That was it; I was over it! 

     We started Baby Boy homeschooling through an accredited charter school. This was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that I didn't have to spend weeks going over my son's curriculum (although honestly I really wanted to because that's just the type of person I am but we just didn't have the time) and a curse because due to my son's teacher never encouraging my son to do the things he needed to do (she would ask him to do something like count to 100 by 10's, which he could do no problem at home, and he would say I don't know and she would just say okay go sit down and mark his report card as unable to do) he had to restart Kindergarten. He was excited when his new books (Horizons Math and Horizons Phonics and Reading) came in until he realized we were doing the same things he had already mastered. This is when I realized just how much my son was like me. I was a gifted student all through school and if I became bored with the work and not challenged I would just stop doing the work all together. Well, my son did the same plus we were having to combat all the bad habits learned in school. He would say I don't know and think that meant he was done--not so in my house. We had all out wars. We have made it half way through his Kindergarten year and I have realized he is bored to death.  We needed a fresh start all together. 

     So here starts our new adventure. After taking test to make sure he is really ready for 1st grade (he more than succeeded on all of the tests) we are about to be ordering our new curriculum in the next few weeks. No more charter school, I am picking the curriculum and getting what I think fits each of my children best. We are also ordering JBug her Pre-K curriculum. We are now 100% dedicated to homeschooling all of our children after many long talks and weighing of the options. I mentioned Krysten above (my best friend/sister)...an important thing to know about her is she is a 2nd grade teacher in public schools God bless her. She and I have had many discussions throughout making this decision on socialization, not giving up on our public schools due to one bad experience with one bad teacher, and the ups and downs of common core entering our schools. I am lucky that after the long decision period she has come to support me as she knows how important this is to me. I love teaching (I wanted to go get my degree to be an elementary ed teacher but I realized how much I loved homeschooling my kids and the funds aren't there right now for me to be able to do that yet.) My husband and I have made our plans on our goals and how to accomplish them. I, since I didn't mention this before, am a Registered Nurse. I loved nursing until it became about nothing but money to our hospitals. So our plan is for me to go to work for now, I would work three 12hr shifts each week, and save money to open up a craft business from home I've always dreamed of. Once that takes off or my husband starts making enough to support us on one income I will officially be a stay at home homeschool Mom. We are hoping to rent a house soon that will allow us to have a room specifically for school (I can't wait for this...we are decorating it just like a school room and will really enjoy it and make it fun for the kids). As mentioned before we are currently staying with my mom which means everyone has their own room but there is not an extra room to dedicate only to school. I am really trying to figure out a way to incorporate a school area into mine and my husband's bedroom (or somewhere). Our bedroom is a 2 car garage that was converted years ago into a room, though with our furniture, the baby, kids toys, etc we are definitely short on room. Maybe some of you will be kind enough to offer opinions on what you have done to accommodate homeschooling. That is the point of this blog after all--I want to share my experiences in hope that maybe it will help someone out there and have you share your thoughts, ideas, successes, failures, etc with me so we can all learn from each other. 

I am sure this post has seemed long, rambling, etc and I am sorry for that. As I said, I am new to this and I really wanted you to understand where I am coming from so you can, in some way at least, know me and my family. I will be writing another post either tonight or tomorrow on our choices for curriculum as I have loved reading everyone else's blogs on their curriculum choices. Any suggestions, comments, thoughts, etc are always welcome here and I can't wait to hear them. 

Thank you for reading and may God Bless y'all!