We’ve Moved! An Update with Miscellaneous Info

Hello Friends!  Long time no see!

Since I’ve been MIA for quite some time now, I wanted to give an update. I’ve received numerous emails asking if we’re okay, and unfortunately I haven’t been able to personally respond to all of them.

The short version is we’ve moved!

I have lots of messy house pictures that I could show you, but I won’t bore you with those. 🙂

About Our Move and Homeschooling

Here are a few random thoughts about the move and the past several weeks.  Moving houses with 7 people and lots of stuff has been one of the most exhausting things I’ve ever had the privilege of doing.

Because this move and all things surrounding it have soaked up all of my mental energy since January, these thoughts are a random, jumbled mess.  Apologies all around.

— We’ve been in our house for 3 1/2 weeks now, however, there are still boxes everywhere.  It’s driving me crazy.  I need for one room in my house to be “complete”.  I’m one of those people that needs to walk into a room and see significant progress for all of the hard work put into it.

Not feeling this yet.

— We started back to homeschool this past week.  Even though the house is still in quite a bit of disarray, it felt great to be in some semblance of a routine again.  My kiddos needed it.  I needed it.

— Speaking of school, whew.  School.  We’ve taken a lot of time off this semester, and I can really tell it in our academics.  We typically school year-round, taking a 4-5 week break from June 1 through the July 4th holiday.  This year, we are going to school through June and take a week off around the 4th.  Then we will start our next school year.

I’m not sure how I feel about this yet!

— The baby is 15 months old and has reached the Tornado stage.  He toddles into the room and thinks, “Hmmm.  What can I destroy in here?”

This adds a significant challenge to our school days. 🙂  He also isn’t much of a napper, or sleeper for that matter.  He takes one nap a day, and it’s usually only for an hour or so.

He clearly hasn’t gotten the memo that he’s the fifth baby, and he needs to sleep in a more predictable pattern!

— I adore our new school room! Besides the kitchen, it’s the only room in the house that is somewhat assembled.  The bookshelves are put together and books are sorted, the white board is up (be still my heart!), and the room is cleared out enough for us to be in it.  It’s quite a few feet larger than our old school room and it is such a delight not to be on top of each other!

— The state of NC requires that we test each year, and I’m planning this later than usual (surprise, surprise).  I had my 7 year old tested with Woodcock-Johnson back in March, so I can check her off of the list.  I was looking at using the Terranova with my 5th and 3rd grade girls, but it’s on back order with every site I tried.  Instead, my girls will do the Stanford 10 online this year.  It was recommended by the testing instructor we typically use, but I didn’t know how I felt about using a 100% online test.  The old school part of me likes paper and pencil.

Because of my lack of planning, we will try the Stanford 10 this year.  I don’t know how it will go being completely online, but I do like that the test isn’t timed.  That’s very appealing to my 5th grader!

About Mama’s Learning Corner

Moving from my personal life to bloggy issues…

— The biggest question that all of you have: When will the new calendar notebooks be published?

I promise you that I’ve read all of your emails about the calendar notebooks, but I haven’t been able to respond to each one.  I always have both of the notebooks published by May 15th, however, this is an usual year for our family and my work-at-home life.

I will admit to you that I haven’t worked one hour in the past 3 months.  While it’s been glorious in many ways, I’m also really behind and it’s hard figuring out where to dip my toe back in.  Calendar notebooks are at the top of my list and I hope to have them published by June 15th at the latest.  I will notify you if it’s going to be later than that, but I hope to meet my goal of the 15th.

When they are published, you’ll be able to find the updates here:

→ Preschool Calendar Notebook

→ Kindergarten-First Grade Calendar Notebook

— The other question I’m being asked a lot: Are you going to continue to make new printables and unit study packets?

The short answer is yes.  I’m not sure how often I’ll be publishing new resources since I’m still knee-deep in house and homeschool.  I will slowly increase my work hours in the coming weeks, but I hesitate to publish any type of schedule because I don’t know if I can actually do it.

As usual, there are a million ideas swirling around in my brain, just no time to actually put them into printable form. 🙂

— The last question I’ll tackle in this post: When will you make videos again?

I get this question ALL THE TIME!  I love making videos about our homeschool days or how we use a particular resource.  I often like making videos better than writing an actual blog post.  They’re fun in a different type of way.

It’s pretty tough to find any type of quiet time in my house to record a video.  With 5 kiddos, our house is JUST. SO. LOUD.

If I can figure out when and where to ship my people out of the house for an hour for some peace and quiet, I’ll get back to making videos.  I miss it!

You can subscribe to my You Tube channel here so you can be notified when I post a new video. Just click here: Lauren Hill on You Tube

Tell me what’s going on in your world:

Are you finishing up your school year?
Schooling through the summer?
Planning for next school year?
Deep cleaning your house?
Decompressing from school?
Making plans for the pool?
Working in the garden?
Visiting family?

I’d love to hear what you’re up to in the comments! ♥

Lauren Hill

Lauren Hill is a Christian mom to 5, ages 19 to 7. She homeschools her children in the classical education tradition and is currently in her 15th year of homeschool. She creates engaging worksheets and hands-on printable activities for Preschool and Elementary age children to supplement their daily studies.

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Homeschool Classical Education Worksheets Printable Activities