Gearing Up for Kindergarten!

Despite us all being under the weather the last few days, we are pushing through and finishing up our tasks before the school year begins on the 7th! I found an enormous dresser at a second hand store that I couldn't pass up. It's going to solve my constant issue of how to hide all of our clutter, and now schooling materials. It needed a lot of work, but for the price, I was willing to put in some elbow grease and get it looking decent. But, here it is, finally finished!

So, we're in the process of completely revamping the play room into a school room and have now put all of the play toys (as opposed to learning toys) in the boys room. So, when Joseph is done with his school stuff and Samuel is still working, Joseph can only play with learning toys downstairs or go upstairs to play with the other toys. It's a way to (I hope) keep Samuel focused and not want to stop working. And also because they are getting some smaller toys now that are so hard to keep away from Annabelle. This way if they are in their bedroom and they aren't ready to put them all away we can just shut the door and keep her out.

We took this out of the playroom and now the boys have their trains, lincoln logs, tinker toys, big legos, small legos, cars and trucks in here in their (gasp) bedroom. I have fought tooth and nail for over 5 years to never have toys in the bedrooms, but here we have it. Never say never, I suppose. They are quick to get into and put away and, most importantly, satisfy this very anti-clutter mama!

And now to go find a new home for all of this stuff before I completely have a heart attack!

Things already done:

• Spent countless hours of prayer, research, interviewing veteran homeschool moms, reading countless books and blogs all to figure out the best way to structure this year. Tips always welcome!
• Registered Samuel through the city.
• Bought materials needed.
• Finished the dresser.
• Repainted the bookshelf.
• Painted the school table white.
• Purged our toys, books and supplies.

Things still to do:

• Organize the school room.
• Wait for 3 books in the mail.
• Figure out if we are going to supplement our curriculum with more math.
• Finalize our name!

I guess that's not so overwhelming now that I look at it and see what we've already done and have left to do. I do know we're all going to get a good laugh out of this entry for years to come. It's all gotta start somewhere, right? I cannot wait to see where our homeschooling years are going to take us. What an exciting escapade we are about to undertake!

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All of those thoughts are juxtaposed against what I read during my quiet time this morning.

Continually restate to yourself what the purpose of your life is. The destined end of a man is not happiness, nor health, but holiness. The only thing that matters is whether a man will accept the God Who will make him holy. At all cost a man must be rightly related to God. ~Oswald Chambers

It sure puts all of this hustle and bustle into getting all of our school things 'just right' in the next few days into perspective. None of that matters unless my heart is in a right relationship with the one who made me.

So, here's to a school year that is full of learning about letters and numbers, plants and animals and vowels and consonants, but most importantly here's to a year that is full of learning as a family what it means to be rightly related to God.