Scholastic Reading Club Sales

Elliott has been saving his money carefully over the last few weeks.  He had been saving most of his money for a 3DS, but when he saw all the Scholastic book sales this month and last month he decided to wait a while on the 3DS.  He had a really long list of books that he wanted, so he saved every penny he could, and even did a few extra chores to make extra money.

Since we have a homeschool account (it's really easy to sign up for one if you are a homeschooler!), we get the same bonus points and teacher opportunities that any other teachers get.  That means we get a lot of free books with our regular orders.  The back to school sales have historically always been some of the best of the year, and this year is no different.  The bonus points go really high if you end up with a fairly large order.  Plus there are coupons for free books for the class, and a free 10 pack of books for the classroom library.

I told Elliott that he could use all the bonus points he earned on his own order on whatever books he wants, and I wouldn't give him a hard time, even if I think the books he picks out are overpriced.  Haha.    He was pretty excited about that, because apparently I tend to tell him he could use his money better elsewhere. ;)

If your kids go to public or private school and get Scholastic book orders right now is a fantastic time to order books.  The teachers will get more bonus points than at any other time of year, and they can use them to build their classroom library or get other nice things for their classroom.  Plus there are more $1 and $2 books in the back to school flyers, and more great deals on larger packs.

We just placed our first order of the school year (most of the stuff was Elliott's, but we actually did have a friend who ordered stuff for her kids this time, too, plus I ordered a few things for gifts and for the giveaway I hosted recently).  We ended up spending about $2 on each book on average.  We also ended up with a lot of great freebies, like free book coupons, posters and stickers, along with enough bonus points to get over $300 worth of books free on future orders!

We love Scholastic book orders because they have such a great variety of books, and most the time have reasonable prices.  We literally have hundreds and hundreds of books that we have bought from Scholastic over the years, and many of them are among Elliott's favorites.

Homeschooling Full Time

We started homeschooling this summer, but only a few days a week. I wanted to ease into it, both for my sake, and my son's.   I wanted him to still have plenty of time to play with his friends over the summer as well.  He's pretty lucky that most of his best friends live close enough that  they can ride bikes to each other's houses.  The one that does live in the next town over has a pretty cool mom, who is willing to bring him over here, or pick him up from here, or even both if she needs to.  So he really got to see all of his closest friends quite a bit over the summer.  I'm really hoping that continues, even with them starting school this week.  I think since we are going to be making the effort, it shouldn't be a problem.  The parents are all on board with planning play times and sleep overs through out the school year, so Elliott is pretty excited about that.

This week Elliott's friends go back to school, so we start going full time, too.  We plan on following the school calendar pretty closely, other than while we are on vacation in November.  He also gets a 4 day weekend for Labor Day instead of just the 3 day weekend his friends get.  That Friday is my birthday, though, and also the one year anniversary of the day my Dad died, so I'm fairly certain that I wouldn't be able to teach very well that day anyway.

We are both pretty excited about homeschooling.  Elliott has learned a lot of stuff, and really enjoys most things we do each day.  To me, the biggest issue is getting everything out and putting it all away again.  We don't have a designated spot to work on it right now, because my husband is working on the flooring in our bedroom.  That means we are sleeping in what was supposed to be the classroom since we can't have any furniture in our bedroom.  After our bedroom is finished, we are going to move Elliott into the old classroom and work on the flooring in his room.  We might just leave him in the old classroom, though, and turn his current bedroom into the classroom.  We haven't decided for sure yet.  Either way, I'm hoping that at some point in September I have a better place to work. :) Right now, my living room couch looks something like this during the school day.

We start out with his books in a neat stack.  As the day goes on, Elliott certainly doesn't keep everything nice and neat.  He digs through the pile to find the next subject, and things become a mess.  It doesn't matter what order I put his things in, we will end up doing them in a different order that day anyway.  Haha.  This pile doesn't include everything he does.  He also has Bible, Spanish, handwriting, and social studies, that just didn't make it into the picture for some reason.

Even though we have a chaotic mess in our living room every day, and some days it drives me crazy, we are really happy with our homeschooling adventure so far!  I feel more at peace with this decision than I ever did about him being in public school.  And it's just amazing to me when he learns something new that is supposed to be well beyond his years.  Don't get me wrong, we have our moments (and sometimes entire days!) when one of us is unhappy with homeschooling.  We've had tears, frustrations, and over all bad attitudes more than I care to admit.  But more often than not, at the end of the day, we can both say we learned something, and homeschool is the right choice for us.

Back to School Giveaway

Elliott and I have spent the last 2 or 3 weeks finalizing our list of must reads for school this year.  We ended up coming up with 20 books that we will read for sure this year.  We read together for about 30-45 minutes every day, and I read to him for another 15-20 minutes during snack time.  He also reads to me most days of the week.  So 20 will almost certainly not be enough books to last all school year, but I think it's a good start.  Plus it gives us the opportunity to watch for more must reads as we learn about different things.

In honor of school starting, and preparing our own book lists, Elliott and I decided to do a book giveaway of our own!  All the books will be brand new scholastic books.  There will be two random winners, and each winner will get to pick the prize pack of their choice.

Prize pack 1:  Early Chapter Books

 

Horrible Harry in Room 2B by Suzy Kline
A Jigsaw Jones Mystery:  The Case of the Stinky Science Project by James Preller
Ready, Freddy!  The King of Show-And-Tell by Abby Klein
Cam Jansen and the School Play Mystery by David A. Adler
Junie B., First Grader: One-Man Band by Barbara Park

Prize Pack 2:  Early Chapter Books



Junie B. Jones and the Stupid Smelly Bus by Barbara Park
Stink: The Incredible Shrinking Kid by Megan McDonald
The Bailey School Kids Jr Chapter Books #5: Dragons Do Eat Homework By Debbie Dadey
The Kids of the Polk Street School: The Beast in Ms. Rooney's Room by Patricia Reilly Giff
Herbie Jones and the Second Grade Slippers by Sami Sweeten


Prize Pack 3: Chapter Books



Third-Grade Detectives #1: The Clue of the Left-Handed Envelope by George E. Stanley
Judy Moody by Megan McDonald
Clementine by Sara Pennypacker
Third Grade Angels by Jerry Spinelli
Stuart Goes to School by Sara Pennypacker

Prize Pack 4: I Can Read! Picture books



 Little Critter: To the Rescue! by Mercer Mayer
What's That, Mittens? by Lola M. Schaefer
Mittens at School by Lola M. Schaefer
Little Critter: This is My Town by Mercer Mayer
Dixie and the Class Treat  by Grace Gilman
Dixie by Grace Gilman

This giveaway isn't sponsored by Scholastic.  We just chose Scholastic books because we love them so much and want to share them with others!  We've read more than a dozen of the ones that are offered as prizes and liked them all.

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Summer Is Almost Over

Since we are homeschooling now, we didn't take a traditional summer vacation.  We are taking an extended vacation in November, so we did enough schooling over the summer to be able to take as much time off as we want in November without running behind.  We do still plan on doing some school work, but only a day or two a week while we are on vacation.

We took it pretty easy this summer with school work, though.  We did full days, but typically only 2 or 3 each week.  There were 2 or 3 weeks where we did 4 days.  We just did whatever we had time for, while still giving Elliott ample opportunity to spend time with his friends.  It worked out well for us, too.  We ended up with at least 20 sleep overs at our house, and half a dozen at his friends' houses.  He also got to go camping with his friend's family.  In addition to all the sleepovers, there were countless hours spent playing with friends at home, at our new land (referred to as the big lawn by Elliott and all his friends for some reason), at the park, or at friends' houses.

His friends go back to school next week, though.  Elliott is sad, but excited at the same time.  Soccer season just started and two of his besties are playing on his team, so he will still see them at least twice a week.  He's also already made arrangements for a sleepover next weekend.  This weekend one of his friends is having a sleepover in a tent in his backyard and inviting Elliott and 2 or 3 other boys.  They are all looking forward to it as their last big sleepover of the summer.

Talking to his friends, most of them are kind of excited about going back to school, but also sad.  Two of them have repeatedly said they want Elliott to go back to public school because they don't know what they will do without him.  Haha.  Elliott keeps saying he will miss his friends, too, but he is loving homeschool.  Even on days that we struggle with a part of homeschool, we are both still happy with the choice overall.  Even though we have only done homeschool 20 something days, he's already learned an incredible amount of stuff! 

Great Deals at The Children's Place

My kid always has a lot of clothes.  He doesn't have to wear uniforms to school, so he loves to wear different clothes that express him, in a variety of styles.  And it seems like laundry is one of the first things that we get behind on when things get busy, so I always make sure he has plenty of jeans (in North Dakota, jeans are necessary every single month of the year, even in the summer), and lots of shirts in all different styles.

Today we were going through his clothes, and decided he needed more jeans in the next size up.  His size eights are currently the perfect length, so I'm sure that within the next 2-3 months they will be too short.  We buy almost all of his clothes at Old Navy or the Children's Place, so we decided to look for sales online at both of those places, since I knew there were lots of back to school sales going on right now.  We ended up deciding on the childrensplace.com.

Right now there is a coupon for 25% off a purchase of $50 or more, or 15% off a smaller purchase.  Plus when you spend $40, you get a coupon for $20 off a $40 purchase good from September 10-September 22.  Jeans are on sale for $10 each,  graphic tees start at $5, and licensed tees are $10 each.

I just finished his school clothes shopping.  I spent $84.46, including tax.  That means I get 2 $20 off a $40 purchase coupons.  For that $84.46 I ended up buying 4 pairs of jeans, 3 long sleeve shirts, 7 short sleeve shirts, and a lunch box.  Elliott is excited about the new clothes.

Clearance School Supplies

School has been back in session here for about 2.5 weeks.  That means that a lot of back to school stuff is on clearance.  We bought most of Elliott's supplies before school started, but waited until the clearance sales to buy the stuff we just wanted, but didn't have to have.

Some of the best deals we've found were lunchboxes at 50% off (he takes his lunch everyday, so we got 2 new ones to add to the rotation of the ones he used in kindergarten, since he leaves them at school sometimes), and crayons at $.25 each.  The cheapest we found Crayola crayons before school started was $.40, so when we were able to get them for $.25 each, we grabbed a few boxes.  We choose names from the Christmas tree at Walmart or KMart every year, and always include a box of crayons and a coloring book or two if we choose children the right age. :)  Elliott often gets crayons for Christmas, too.

We also picked up a few more notebooks for $.16-25 each to use at home.  Elliott needed 2 for school this year, and that will probably last all year, or at least most of it, since he's only in first grade.

We also found some Lego school supplies on clearance.  Elliott is REALLY into Legos right now, so he actually used his own money to buy the pencil sharpener and pencils.  They were on clearance for a decent price, so I feel like he used his money wisely.