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We are a military family who recently moved from Kansas, to near our Nation's Capitol. We truly enjoyed "Little Hands" last year with our daughter Savannah, and were so excited to start the 1st grade "Little Hearts." Although I planned on letting our summer vacation linger, with precious baby #3 due in two weeks, my husband and I prayerfully agreed that we should start "official school" earlier. That way we can take a bit of time off later when our little one arrives.

So, we started school on Monday, with a yummy "back-to-school-brownie-pencil" and have had a blast the past 2 days! Thank you again Carrie for listening to our Heavenly Father and writing such a fantastic curriculum!

Blessings to Ya'll! ~ Sheri

http://sheriprescott.blogspot.com

P.S. Do you have any tips for homeschooling with a newborn and a two-year-old?

Your pictures are great! I love the pencil brownine idea. Best of luck with your new son.

Wow! How fun! I loved your pencil. We do a cake each year I may have to copy you. Very cute and your girls are adorable. Congrats on your little boy waiting to be born. Thanks for sharing!

I am glad that you are having fun. We loved doing Little Hearts last year.

Homeschooling with a newborn and 2 year old - Try to do as much of the "intense" stuff like phonics, math and handwriting while your 2 year old is napping. Get good at reading and feeding. Also remember that it is okay to split the day up. Last year I would split the boxes into 2 or 3 sections depending on attention span, cooperation of my 2 year old, and when the baby needed to eat. It can be done and you will find a schedule that will work for you.

Karen

Sheri,

I'm so glad that you're off to a good start! You may surprised how easy it is to pick and and go with HOD even when the baby comes!

Thanks for sharing!

Blessings,
Carrie

Hi Sheri! Congrats on your decision to do HOD, and also an early congrats on the upcoming birth of your precious baby! I want to offer you words of encouragement about homeschooling with HOD when you have a baby and a toddler. I have homeschooled with HOD on complete bedrest for basically my entire pregnancy (through 2 different pregnancies), and we still were able to have a productive, enjoyable time with it. I used my "up" time of 10 minutes to set out all of the boys' books in order of need in piles across our counter. Then, the boys brought me each pile and we worked through them that way (and that was doing LHFHG, Bigger..., and DITHOR). So, I just wanted to put your heart at ease about this because I know you'll be able to do fine with it!

As far as tips, #1 tip is to work from the baby's schedule. When baby is happy, everyone is happy! Once you've roughed out on paper what schedule baby seems to be on, it helped me to put all of the more teacher-intensive things during baby's nap(s). Phonics, math instruction, history activities, science experiments, etc. worked well during the nap(s). When baby was up, he loved listening to the music (I marched around the kitchen with him during it ), and baby loved the fingerplays/poems/rhymes. He also loved to watch the physical activity for memorizing the Bible verses (i.e. throwing the ball to each other, rolling it through our legs, etc.). I also did the read-alouds during feeding him. My oldest ds held the book and turned the pages for me. Those kind of things worked well while baby was up. If you have a bouncy seat, that was a good thing to have too! You've got a great idea to start early and get into the swing of things. We did that too, and I was thankful because then the things that the dc were supposed to do independently they really could because we'd done them before and they knew what was expected. So school is going to be wonderful, and I pray for an easy labor and delivery for you!

In Christ,
Julie

You all are so sweet and I've REALLY appreciated your words of encouragment and ideas. Thank you so, so much!!!

Hope ya'll are having a wonderful week and thanks again ! ~ Sheri