Taking Health Seriously Pt. 2

This is a follow up post to my March health post.

I am now at 42.6 pounds lost (!!!!), at least 4 clothing sizes and (going by bust+waist+hips) 10.5 inches smaller. All since January.

I am SUPER stoked. I haven't been this small since I was about 5 mths pregnant with Isaac (17 years ago,,,). I am only 12 (!!!) pounds from my ultimate goal (which is still technically "overweight", but I have a large frame and have no interest in being "skinny", just healthy).

January to the end of May I worked really hard. I've never done so well for so long and my new clothing sizes proves it. In June I had 2 surgeries 11 days apart, one of them major abdominal surgery. I was on restrictions for 6 weeks and even after that still felt like a zombie.

While I didn't get much exercise done over the summer, I still worked really hard to keep my eating good. 95% of the time I stayed below my calorie goal on MyFitnessPal. Even with the lack of exercise, I managed to lose 10lbs over the summer.

By the end of Sept, I was feeling 100% again. The temps were cooler. Workouts could happen again! We all love walking and have a great bike path that's only a block away. I put together a daily workout to try to tone, since losing all that weight has shrunk a lot of parts but also made a lot of parts floppy.

We joined AquaFit now that beach season is over. While AquaFit is MUCH harder than it looks, it is still fun. And it's something different than the usual sweaty reps. We walk there while the weather is still nice so we get a 2 mile walk in as well.

As winter comes, it'll be tempting to get lazy. I really hope I can keep the will power to keep going!

I WILL Take This Year's Weight Loss Seriously

Several times now I have done the common "New Year, new ME!" fad. I've lost as much as 40lbs (3-4 years ago and starting from a much higher weight). Last year I lost 14. Then gained 9 of it back.

Last year I started buying sewing patterns. I don't want to waste money and time buying fabric and making myself cute stuff for it to flip flop being too big and too small. I want to be able to enjoy my hard work for a long time!

I have the added bonus of a new friend, who kinda lives next door (she actually lives on the street behind me but our back yards share a fence so that still counts!). She too is overweight and wants to be healthy for her family.

She overeats but has loads of energy. I eat pretty healthy but am lazy. We bounce off each other great! She yells at me to get off my butt, I yell at her if she grabs a chocolate bar.

I have loads of fantastic online friends who have been my weigh loss buddies for years. I love them to bits and would probably be a lot heavier right now if it weren't for them. But there's just something that makes you extra accountable to have someone right there in your face telling you not to cheat.

This year, I'm already down 11lbs.

All I've done is the same thing I always do - eat better (and less) and move more.

I use MyFitnessPal to track my calories. Calorie counting in general isn't a big thing as it doesn't take into effect good and bad calories. A banana and a half a chocolate bar are both roughly 100 calories. But counting calories works for me as I can see, first hand, portion control. Which is my big food issue. I eat fairly healthy stuff, but I eat way too much of it.

For exercise, I track my steps via the S Health app, built into my phone (an S5 but is now available for download for some other Android phones). Again, the visual helps me see my progress and motivates me to make the numbers go up. I also occasionally use a treadmill and an exercise bike, but I really dislike exercise equipment. I can't wait for the snow and ice to vamoose so I can get back to walking outside!

I'm still 43lbs from my goal. Will I see goal this year? Maybe. But I will get a hell of a lot further than I have in the past!

Weekly Wrap Up

I've been slackin' over here! Not surprisingly, it's been crazy busy. With my business and getting back into the school routine, it's been pretty hectic!

Last Monday, Brianna did her final running race of the season. She knocked 2 minutes and 22 seconds off her last 5K time! She bikes a 10K for Terry Fox then is in off season training until next May

Olivia insisted on running with Brianna for a stretch

On Tuesday (first day of school for local public schools) our local homeschool group did our Not Back to School picnic. It was a small group, only 4 families, but I'm trying to get more activities going! The kids had a blast and Brianna even met with another girl her age (most of the homeschool kids in our area are much older or younger than her).

Brianna, 12, age-grade "7"

Olivia, 5, age-grade "K"

On Wednesday, the girls did their first real day of school. We decided to start slow with them only working in their new daily books for the week as it was only 3 days and Daddy was on vacation time so we had extra distractions!

This week, I did a homeschool assessment for a friend's daughter who is Gr. 1-2. It was great for me as it gave me a sneak peek into the next couple years with Olivia. We only started homeschooling with Brianna in Gr. 3, so I have only homework knowledge of Gr. 1 and 2.

Olivia seems to be loving doing school work every day. She does often complain about her arm hurting if we do too much (in her opinion) writing, but I think that's because she presses too hard with the pencil or crayon. Any ideas to get her to lighten up?

Olivia loved this graph from A Teaching Mommy

Brianna's excited about the new things we'll be doing this year, starting with Brave Writer's Poetry/Tea Time Tuesdays. We may do it a little different than Brave Writer at first, but Brianna expressed interest in learning about poetry when finding out that poems do no have to rhyme, so we're running with it!

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

4 Ways to Ease Curriculum Planning

Tis the season! Even year-round homeschoolers like myself, spend at least part of the summer planning new curriculum (watch for my current curriculum post come Sept). Here's some of the ways I don't lose my mind.

1. Do not try to do it all at once.

Spread it out over a few days or even weeks. It ain't gonna go anywhere. Sure, I'll get into spurts where I'll spend 2 hours looking over various English stuff, but if my eyes start glazing over or I'm getting easily distracted, I walk away.

Spreading it out also makes it easier on the pocket book if you have several new items to purchase.

2. Look at what you already own before researching new curriculum.

Who's a curriculum hoarder? *raises hand*

If you're anything like me, there's a good chance you've already got at least some of what you need for the following grade/level. Especially for the younger set. Whether it's hard copy paper books or PDF files or stuff bookmarked on the net, I bet you've got a lot of what you need.

Even if you aren't a hoarder, go through what you've already got any way. Chances are, you can find at a few things you can use for at least supplementing and it won't gather dust any more.

3. Break it down by subjects/goals/children.

What do you need for English? What grades are you covering? Do you already have any usable curriculum? Are there trouble areas (spelling, grammar, ect...) that you should look for supplements in? Did you and your kid(s) enjoy the last curriculum that you used? Do you need something less detailed or more intensive? Now how about math? Science?

By spitting it up by subject or goal and even each individual child, it doesn't seem so overwhelming. If I sat down one day and said I need everything for both Brianna and Olivia *right now* I'd be in the looney bin.

4. Keep track of your plans.

Whether you're a paper and pencil person like me or want to fill in a fancy spreadsheet, keep track of the planning you've done. That way you aren't researching the same science curriculum you just looked at 3 days ago. Or even worse, actually ordering and paying for the same history text you just bought.

Linked up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Real Life at Home

6 Tips for the Budget Conscious Homeschooler

I don't hide it, I'm poor. According to the Canadian Government, my family lives below the poverty line. Honestly, I'm ok with this. Suuuuure, it would make life easier to have more money, but I make do with what we've got to work with.

Of course, being poor translates into cheap frugal homeschooling. You can homeschool with loads of money to spend or zero money to spend. I could easily (well easily in my opinion cause I'm a little nuts about my love of researching stuff) homeschool all of my kids without spending anything more than ink, paper and pencils. Some people don't even do the ink and paper part! But, while I'm poor, I like to shop. I am cheap frugal though. I look for free stuff, awesome sales and used curriculum.

There's a zillion ideas for homeschoolers to save money, but here's my top 6 that I used most frequently.

1. Don't buy a several items of a new curriculum choice.

When I first started homeschooling Brianna, I went with Complete Canadian Curriculum books that I purchased from the book store. I figured they'd be perfect for us! As it turned out, I didn't like these, Brianna didn't like these, and it ended up being a waste of money. Now these books were only around the $20 mark each, but when we had several of them, it adds up.The Complete *individual subject* Smart books were better as we could use whatever grade level we needed and they were more in depth. We still didn't enjoy them a lot. They went into too much busy work but not enough detail for the stuff Brianna wanted to learn or do. Again, only $15 books, but when you have several.... (if you're just looking at a cheap supplement though, they can work)

2. The library is your best friend.

The library, provided it has a good children's department, will provide you and your kid(s) with oodles of books on a gazillion topics. Sure the internet can provide you with a lot of the same research material, but there's just something about laying out the table with a fat stack of books.

Some libraries also have free (and sometimes cheap pay) programs which you can use to your homeschool's advantage. Brianna does a Read to Ride program each summer which gives children a free bus pass for the summer in exchange for giving oral book reports to the librarians. Brianna's also done a yoga program and a movie program at the library.

3. Look for used curriculum sales.

They can be found online (facebook is my "dealer" of choice), they can be found at homeschool conventions. You can find stuff that's super cheap and even "free for shipping" and you can find more expensive stuff for a heck of a lot less than the company sells them for new. Some stuff people list are brand new (curriculum hoarders lol this will be me once all 3 kids are out of the lower grades).

4. Curriculum co-ops or just co-ops in general.

Homeschool Buyers Coop is fantastic. They offer a HUGE variety of curriculum at great discounts. I've gotten deals as high as 80% off. They also offer some free gems for members. My favorite is the Homeschooler ID cards. We're cheap so we print out the free ones and laminate our own, but for a small fee HBC will mail you hard laminated ID cards.

Local homeschool co-ops can be a great source as well. Chances are, *someone* is going to have kids older than yours. Maybe they used a re-usable curriculum that they are done with and are happy to give you or sell to you for cheap. Ya never know unless you ask! These are also great people to ask for reviews on curriculum you are considering. If they still use it/own it, you could even ask to get a hands-on look through (something I prefer over seeing a "preview" online).

5. Find and bookmark great free sites.

As is pretty obvious in my blog, 1+1+1=1 is hands down my favorite preschool/Kindergarten printables site. While she does have some printables that cost money, they are all very reasonable costs and majority of her content is completely free.

Khan Academy is a glorious free site. It mostly focuses on math, but also has some science, arts, economics and test prep. We love it because I can assign topics to Brianna and every one of them has a teaching video (or several) to go with it.

6. Don't be afraid to make your own curriculum.

With a little research and effort, you can make a lot of your own curriculum out of your own imagination. Before we settled on Math Mammoth we used a variety of math curriculum. They either didn't come with year end tests or I didn't like them. So I made my own. Going through the book, I gathered all of the main topics learned and made up my own math problems.

Another (that I'm in the middle of working on right now) is how to effectively grocery shop to get the best bang for your buck. I constantly see people saying they spend many hundreds of dollars on groceries in a month. I spend roughly $400-450 a month for a family of 6 in Canada (where our grocery prices can be double what they are n the US). I want to teach Brianna how I do it in great detail. I want her to put what I teach her into practice shopping for the family. No such curriculum for that exists. I make my own.

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Real Life at Home.

6 Reasons I Homeschool

People often ask homeschoolers why they homeschool, here's my top reasons, for my family. This is an incomplete list as the reasons are endless, but it's a good start for me!

1. Better education. I am not a public school or teacher hater. I am a system hater. I know loads of GREAT teachers and Brianna used to go to a GREAT public school. But the system has failed those teachers and schools. Teachers can't actually teach any more. Bullying is rampant because teachers aren't allowed to discipline any more. Grades are sky high, which seems like a good thing, but it's not because kids are doing awesome in their schoolwork, it's because the current grading system does not allow zeros. If you don't do your work, it just doesn't get graded. Another niece of mine thought she'd need an out of province drivers license if she moved to Toronto (some of my readers may not know the sadness of that, we live in Ontario, this niece lives in Ottawa, Ontario, the capital of Canada, Toronto is the capital of Ontario, 7 hrs away from Ottawa). I believe much more geography is needed, but at least some basic your-own-province geography would be nice!

2. Brianna actually ASKS to learn new things. School isn't a thing to be hated. Sure we learn the stuff she needs to know to succeed as an adult, but she also learns about the things that interest her, like when we spend about a month doing almost nothing but the Titanic.

3. Our lives don't revolve around the school schedule. If we want to take a week off in May for no flipping reason, we can! If the baby kept everyone up last night, it's no big deal if we don't start school til noon!

4. Homeschooling in Ontario is really easy. In a nut shell, we live in a no-reporting area and I don't have to keep a mound of paperwork to keep some politician happy.

5. Two words: Common Core. That crap is scary and I can't figure out math for the life of me, using it!

6. Public school does not teach even 1/4 of the life skills kids need. Most of the basic ones they used to teach, have been cut. Way too many teens can not count change as cashiers. A lot have no clue how to prepare inexpensive simple meals. Kids are often truly amazed when they discover how much what they considered "needs" costs. Ask the average just-out-of-high-schooler to unclog a toilet, how to balance a budget, how to mow a lawn, how to re-set a water heater, how to use a sewing machine, how to make a simple piece out of wood. Too many of them would have no clue. Yes, of course, I agree, it's a parent's job to teach this stuff, but a lot of it used to be taught in school.

Public school works for some families, but I'm beyond grateful that homeschooling is an option for my family.

Linked up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and Real Life at Home and Hip Homeschool Moms

Homeschooling in Ontario

I was asked by The Canadian Homeschooler to write a blog post about starting homeschooling in my province.

Here in Ontario we're pretty lucky to live in a no reporting area. We need to provide a letter of intent to homeschool to our local school board and that's about it!

If you are pulling your child from public school, you must do this so your child isn't considered truant. You do not need to send a copy of the letter to your child's principal, but it is generally considered to be a common courtesy. If you are homeschooling from the start, it's not completely necessary to do this unless you are "discovered" by the local board, but people often do file the letter of intent just to cover all bases. In my case, I pulled my daughter Brianna from public school, so send a letter of intent each year. For my younger daughter Olivia, who will never be in the public school system, I will just add her to Brianna's letter of intent when the time comes (6 years old in Ontario).

Some school boards will try to tell you that you have to inform them of curriculum plans or do testing. This is not true. In Ontario there are no laws for homeschoolers that require you to submit curriculum plans, text book lists or reading lists. There are also no required testings in Ontario. You do not need to have approval to teach what you wish to you child.

You do have the legal option for your children to take the EQAO in grades 3, 6 and 9 and the Literacy test in Gr. 10, but they are not required. If you choose to have your children take these tests simply notify your child's old school (or in the case of homeschooling from the beginning or due to school closure, a nearby school) the year your child will need to take the test (the earlier the better) and the school is required to provide your child with space to take the test. The results will be returned to the school the test was taken at and the school is then to forward the results to you.

If you'd like, the Ministry of Education has the general Ontario curriculum on their website, Elementary and Secondary and also the French Language Education. You can closely or loosely follow this curriculum. Some parents choose to do this so their children will stay at the same level as their classmates in the case that they would have to be re-integrated into the public system.

Other parents choose other methods of homeschooling that have nothing to do with the Ministry of Education's planned curriculum. These are all perfectly legal for parents to do. If there was a point in time that you had no choice but to place you child back in public school, the school would simply administer a placement test to verify learning levels.

 The Ontario Federation of Teaching Parents is the best resource for parents new to homeschooling. It give a breakdown of the laws and provides parents with blank letters of intent that they can fill out and mail to provided school board addresses. The site also provides a list of homeschooling groups by area. You can use the information on their site for free and/or become a member of the OFPT for a small fee.

Some people will make out homeschooling to be difficult. In some ways it is, but at least in Ontario you don't have the added problems of cutting through miles of red tape from the government.

ETA - Here is the link for the post on The Canadian Homeschooler

Apologies and Mini School

Sorry about suddenly disappearing. My Mozilla died and I had to figure out how to get everything working again. But I'm back!!!!

2 weeks ago I launched (locally) my children's accessories business. I have been crazy busy with orders so we have been on a ultra basic school schedule. The first week I damn near killed myself trying to get everything done (work and school). Thankfully I have some great homeschooling friends who had me let myself slack off.

We homeschool year round at a slightly above normal speed. So in a "school year" we've done about a year and a half of school. So we have plenty of "time" to slow down so I can get my customers orders done. I have Brianna doing basics almost everyday, just so she doesn't lose what we've already covered.

Homeschooling for Mommy

For Christmas, I asked for and got, a breadmaker. Very exciting stuff! However, not only had I never used a breadmaker before, but I had never even used yeast before! Thankfully I have a wonderful homeschool buddy, Becky, who makes nothing but fresh bread for her family and offered to come over and teach me hands on to make bread her way (which I love!).

I prepped it up and did the dough cycle in the breadmaker before she came over (she uses her breadmaker for the kneading and first rising then does the rest by hand in the oven). When we pulled the dough out of the maker it seemed a bit stiff. Turns out, I actually need to make sure the water is totally level with the measuring cup rather than just below the rim like I do for other baking. Also because of the seeming lack of water, it didn't seem to rise too much. I mean, it totally looked like bread, but not as big as the loaves I had bought from Becky.

But oh my oh my did it taste fanfreakingtastic!!! The baby wasn't terribly impressed (but then she's got a love/hate relationship with bread, sometimes she hates it, sometimes you can't get enough in her!). However, myself, Lee and Brianna ate almost the whole loaf lol 

Because of the flying through the fresh bread, I decided to try another loaf on my own. This time I did 2/3 whole wheat flour and only 1/3 white flour (Becky taught me with 1/3 ww and 2/3 white, but we prefer ww bread). I screwed up right out of the shoot lol Put all the ingredients in, turned it on, notice nothing's moving *sigh* I didn't put the spinny thing (my great terminology) back in after cleaning. So, hoping I didn't just screw up the whole thing, I dumped the stuff from the bucket into a bowl, put the spinny thing in and dumped the stuff back in the bucket. Turn it on... NOW it's working! Thankfully, even after playing with the ingredients, I didn't screw it up and it turned into a pretty loaf of bread (fully risen with the proper amount of water and such). We haven't tried it yet cause I wouldn't let anyone cut it til the first loaf was gone, but we'll try it tomorrow.

Tomorrow I'm gonna pick up some bread bags so I can freeze it as I go. I'm hoping to quickly get to the point where we don't have to buy store bought bread anymore!

BTW, welcome to my new followers!

Homeschool Bowling

Today we had Brianna's much anticipated homeschool bowling. She's been patiently counting down the days since it was first discussed back in Nov. Today was the day!!!

We got a ride there, but mom had to go to work before it would be over, so we brought the sled to bring Olivia home. Brianna was matched with Emily and Shayna and Ryan, 2 12/13 yr old girls and a sweet little boy. Brianna's chatted with the girls several times at soccer so it was a good set up. A little hero worship going on lol

Brianna did pretty well I say for only having bowled 3 times. She did get a lot of gutter balls, but all in all bowled better than I would have lol She did technically get a strike at one point, but I understand the last pin took too long to fall so the machine didn't count it. She did get an acknowledged spare though. Olivia was amazingly well behaved considering it was naptime and no one would let her play with the balls

After, we all shared Christmas goodies in the "bar" of the alley. We brought brownies that I threw together at the last moment after being reminded that we were supposed to bring a snack to share with the group.


We also finally got to meet the mom who was supposed to drive me to the moms meeting (but ended up not being able to with her DH coming down with a case of appendicitis). She has decided to start HSing next month instead of Sept. I guess she's finally had enough with her son's school. We also discovered that Lisa, a mom down the street, is looking into HSing her kids. Brianna plays with the kids once and a while and it would certainly be nice to have kids a little more local that are HSers! 


We have no more homeschool group meetings til the new year since our next regular soccer meet would be Christmas Eve. I'm pretty sure our next one will be Jan 7th, but I have to find out. Brianna's gonna go through withdrawls!


On a school note, we had a great day school-wise today. She quickly finished up her English work, dawdled only a little through her French work and threw herself into our making of our wagon-wheel-pasta snowflakes. Very cute craft.


Mix approx 3/4-1 cup wagon wheel pasta in a bowl with a few tbs white glue. Arrange pasta pieces into snowflake shapes on a piece of wax paper on a cookie sheet. We painted some extra glue over the completed shapes just to make sure they stuck together. Then we decorated them with glitter and left to dry. Tomorrow were gonna peel them off and spray them with a sealing glaze and hang them in the windows.


Pictures of bowling and out snowflakes to come as soon as I can get the camera working on the new laptop!

A Secular Site!

I have zero problem with the fact that I'm a minority being a secular homeschooler. However, it is nice to see some things made for secular HSers! I was directed to the site secularhomeschool.com and am very excited to check it out!


Also got some great FREE pdf files (I guess they're e-books or something) from currclick.com. They were having a big Cyber Monday sale. It was set pdfs that were free but I think I picked up 7 or 8 that will be useful for us.

And last but not least, a shot of the baby helping Brianna with her schoolwork :)

Week 3 Begins

This week we have the addition of Grandma. My mom moved in with us as of yesterday. It'll be nice for the financial help and the Olivia entertainment when Brianna's not done her work when the baby gets up.

We added French to her work last week with the workbook her French teacher gave me and the workbook I bought. Thankfully I've bookmarked Google Translate! Once we get more settled in I think I may look into Rosetta Stone as I've heard good things about their French program.

Presents from the French Teacher

Finally got around to unpacking Brianna's backpack. Her teacher told me that she included a duotang of worksheets for the play they just started in French class. She also included a DVD of the actions. 

While unpacking her backpack I found in her agenda a sheet of paper with a whack of websites to use! Apparently she's being left in the "online class" where they can make comics with their classmates. There's also a whole bunch of sites that are reference sites for French and several French sites with games and such on them. 

It's so nice to have this bit of extra support from her French teacher! Also, the crossing guard, Yvonne, has told me to get ahold of her for French help too.

On a side note, I was able to get a ride to my first homeschool mom's meeting! The woman who's driving me still has her son in PS for this year, but she's looking to pull him for next year. Can't wait til Wednesday!

Letters of Intent

Mailed out the letter of intent to the school board. Apparently they don't always respond, but I can request it if I need it. 

Also met with Brianna's principal today. First to bring up the bullying again and second to give him my other letter of intent. He was surprisingly very open to HSing. He wants my name on the school list to be mailed school newsletters so I can stay in the loop and mentioned that at one of his old schools that they invited HSers to field trips and such. He also has no problem with Brianna coming back to the school to visit her old teachers and such (obviously out of school time)

I am very surprised by the show of support. From what I hear it's quite rare. He did mention some paperwork, which I assume is to relieve the school of any liability to Brianna while doing school stuff once she's no longer registered, but I'll be going through the paperwork with a fine toothed comb to make sure there's nothing else in there. 

In Ontario, we're lucky enough to have zero regulations on HSing other than providing a letter of intent, so I know the schools can't "make" me do reports or testing. I *can* have Brianna tested during the EQAOs if I chose, but I don't have to. I also know that I don't have to let anyone from the school/board look over Brianna's work or my plans. Hopefully the paperwork is solely what I assume... removing liability from the school (which I have no problem with).