Gratituesday: First Day of School Survival (and My Comments Button is WORKING!)
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Today marks the first day that I have a second grader, a fifth grader, a seventh grader…and a sophomore in high school. Wowza. What happened to my babies and pre-schoolers?
I am very proud of my boys today. They set their alarms and got up and ready for breakfast on time. They maintained good attitudes (almost) all day. They worked hard. They listened well while I read to them. They got everything done on their assignment lists. They kept to a good schedule.
Why yes, sometimes we do sit on top of the kitchen table to do our Math lessons…
It was a great day. Have I mentioned before that I love home schooling? Ah, this is the life.
This afternoon, after all of the school work was checked off the lists, we headed out for swimming lessons. Then we chased back home to get Elias off to soccer practice with Dad. And then I collapsed. I couldn’t have cooked dinner if you paid me. (Leftovers to the rescue!) It was like someone hit me over the head with a sleepy stick.
It may have been from my busy day, but more than likely, it was because I stayed up way too late last night trying once again to figure out what was wrong with my website that was preventing so many of you from leaving comments on my posts. That has been an issue and a half, I tell ya. For weeks, we’ve been trying to figure out the mystery of why this was happening. After many hours of work, much prayer, a few tears, and all kinds of trial and error to find the problem – I believe I finally got it figured out and taken care of last night. Praise God! The non-techy(ish) answer to what happened is that a bunch of my coding got wonky in my sidebar widgets when we upgraded the back end of my site a few weeks ago. Once I recognized that this was a problem, I went into all of my sidebar widgets and re-coded as necessary - until my eyes began to cross. But it worked!!!!!!!!! I can’t tell you how thankful I am! (And if that whole paragraph means absolutely nothing to you, that’s okay. Just be happy for me anyway.) :)
So go ahead, leave a comment! Yay! I’ll read it in the morning, because I’m heading to bed early tonight. I have sleep to make up for and school to teach tomorrow!
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Just trying to leave a comment to see if it works this time…. Hope so!
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Pamela Reply:
August 6th, 2012 at 6:39 pm
Woo-hoo!!!!!!!!! (Now I can enter all those awesome giveaways again!)
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Good job, Laura!
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I think the time stamp might be wonky though. It’s 7:22pm in California, which makes it 9:22pm your time.
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Laura Reply:
August 6th, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Yes, that’s been wonky forever!! :)
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YEA, it works!!!!! :)
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Thank you for your website, ministry, and consistency in encouraging homemakers! :)
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I’m grateful that I live in a country where I can homeschool my childre, that I live in a state that supports homeschooling, and I’m thankful for my beautiful children that God has blessed me with and the ability to teach them and impart our faith to them on a daily basis!! I linked up how our homeschooling is going so far, we are 5 weeks in and what we are using this year! Thanks for your blog!!
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Yay!!! So grateful you were able to figure out the problem and solve it, and always grateful to read a post about homeschooling! My husband and I have a 22-month-old and twin boys due in October, and it absolutely thrills me to no end that you love to teach your boys so much! Now let’s hope I can pull the same off with our children. ;(
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Laura Cherry Reply:
August 6th, 2012 at 7:09 pm
That was supposed to be a smiley face. I really am excited about teaching our rugrats!! ; p
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Wow! Our school books arrived today. We have a little prep work to finish & it will be time for school at our house, too! Thanks for encouraging & challenging me daily. Enjoy your rest tonight!
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Yeah!! Glad you got it figured out! :)
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Can I?
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Brighid Reply:
August 6th, 2012 at 8:19 pm
Yeah! It worked! It worked!
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We started homeschooling today, too. A month early, but why not!
Hopefully, we can stay caught up this year. Have a great school year! Linked up today.
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Today was our first day of school, too! It’s my first year homeschooling, and I want to make sure we stay on schedule.
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Yay for starting the year off on a good note! This will be my first year home schooling!! I’m so excited! My son will talk to anyone who will listen, and when they find out he’s turning 5 they automatically ask him about starting kindergarten and going to school. It’s so cute when he tells them, “No, no, no. I’m not going to a place. We’re going to do school at home. It’s called home school!” He expects people to be as happy about it as he is, and some people are, but others just look to me to say differently. I just smile and nod.
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oh, yay!
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I can’t believe it’s time to start school already! I hope all of you homeschool moms have a great school year!
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So glad that you’re comment-able again! Techy problems are the worst!
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Homeschooling brings a smile to my face. Great job Laura. I just got back from staying 15 days in the Plain Community where eldest son and his family now live. I am blogging about it.
Blessings
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So glad you made peace with all your techy issues! Those can be so dang frustrating….
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What math are you using with your 2nd grader? We used Saxon last year and my daughter did not care for it.
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Laura Reply:
August 7th, 2012 at 6:21 am
We use Miquon math up through third grade, then we switch to Teaching Textbooks (which is AWESOME!). Saxon has never worked for us.
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Hurray for working comments!
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Hurray for comments
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Yea! For getting your website figured out and for a great 1st day of school! I think you hit it a little harder than we did. Yesterday was a little science, a little math, a little organizing and a whole lot of USA vs. Canada women’s soccer! :-) Day 2? Field trip for 2/3 of the boys this AM, then an Olympic co-op group this afternoon. :-) Blessings in your new school year!
Michelle
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As soon as we updated to Mountain Lion last week the problem was fixed for us.
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YEAH!!!!!!! I can leave a post!!! Thank you for all your hard work to get this cleared up. I am GRATEFUL!!!!!
GOD BLESS!!!
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UGH! I *HATE* having to track down coding issues. It’s a nightmare! Glad you figured it out!
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Looks like you sure have your school teaching in order :) So your make your kids get up as if they were going to school eh?I know some SO CALL HOME SCHOOLERS who claim to teach their kids at home…..and this is not what they do !!! They sure need lessons from you…..kids get up when they want to, do their home work when they want to…..etc….get my point ???? to me this is not home schooling and I wonder how they get by with it !!!!
So do your kids take breaks, and have a lunch period and then back to schooling ???? Would love to see one of your school days scheduling……perhaps some people need to see this !!!! Have a great day Laura, and you are doing a wonderful job with your kids…Love your blog and look forward to reading it….
Have another question…. how are the contest winners picked ? just wondering :) Thanks
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Laura Reply:
August 7th, 2012 at 9:33 am
I’ll try and share a break down of our schedule soon. Yes, we do get up and get going for school, but since we typically have late nights with soccer and church activities, our school start time is 9:00. This works well for our family. It could be that some of the homeschoolers you are referring to are simply on a more laid back schedule (we certainly have days like that as needed!). Every home schooler runs things a little differently. Just so long as they are learning, I love that homeschooling provides flexibility!
To pick contest winners, I have a “plug-in” in the back end of my site (kind of like a specific software) that I use. It randomly picks the winners for me – a fair way to do it and very convenient for me!
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Thank you for working so diligently to get the comments fixed. And all while getting school back up and running! Blessings on you. We will be starting in the next few weeks at our house. So much to do to get ready, but oh, so worth it. Have a wonderful year.
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Let’s see…will it work this time?? Hope so!!
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Lisa Reply:
August 7th, 2012 at 8:18 am
Yeah! So glad your school year is off to a good start AND that your
comment problem is fixed. :) Today I’m thankful that we’re not starting
school until the day after Labor Day, for a glorious day at the river
yesterday, and for the gift of godly friendships for my son and daughter!
Blessings to you and yours!
Lisa
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Laura, I tried to leave this comment the other day, on the reading list post, but was unable so here goes another try….Thanks for fixing the problem!…..original comment below:
Hi Laura & happy belated birthday! This list came just in time, as I’ve been searching for some good reads for my boys. You just make it look sooo easy! You really do inspire me! All of you homeschooling moms do! I have a question for all of you, what would you say, on average, is the amount of time you spend on schooling per day? And do you do Monday through Friday or an alternate schedule? I am going to try homeschooling my preschooler this year, after Labor Day, and am still praying on what to do with her and my 3rd & 4th graders for the next school year (2013-2014). That will be their last year at public school with their grandma who is the Principal. I still don’t have the confidence you all posses! I really wish I did!
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Laura Reply:
August 7th, 2012 at 3:43 pm
We do a Mon-Thurs school week, keeping Fridays open for PE and field trips. However, our high schooler needs Mon-Fri to get all his work done.
Personally, I probably spend about two hours total schooling my kids. They work independently for more hours, but with the exception of Malachi (2nd grade) they can do most of their work on their own. It’s great when they’ve learned how to learn and you can give them a list and resources and say “go!”. Matt and I are available for questions and help, of course.
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Yay! I’m happy I can comment again!
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We have started school, too. Congrats on getting the comment thingy straightened out!
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Yay! Techy stuff is so not my strong suit either but it always feels like such an accomplishment when you figure something out on your own:).
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Glad you are starting the school year off well…we won’t start until next month some time…do you always start in August?
I hope the comment thing works!
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Laura Reply:
August 7th, 2012 at 3:38 pm
Yes, we always start the first week of August so we can get into a good routine before soccer season hits!
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Hey Laura,
Finally started a blog, and of course linked up to my FIRST Gratituesday. Actually you are my first link up too!
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Laura Reply:
August 7th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Yay!
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My first Gratituesday!!! I was a reader of yours for a long time and recently “found” you again. Yay!!!
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Oh , I love when school starts…not to get rid of children…it’s the smell of new pencils, crayons and fresh starts! :) Just like God…fall gives us a “redo” ! God Bless!
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I love that you limit the posts that are on here. Makes for a good wholesome read! Keep up the good work!
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Thanks Laura, for answering my questions…..
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Love to see the happiness in other families!
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Hard to believe that it’s time to go back to school already. For some reason I thought we had one more week, but realized today that we start next week instead. Time had just flown by this summer.
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