of organizing the bedroom and yearly memories

Oh hai there homeschoolers / homeschooling moms! After slacking off blogging last week, I'm back to slacking this week. So sorry for the lack of updates, huhu! It can't be helped: the kids' colds turned into full-blown flu (colds, cough, fever) and our internet connection has been acting up. But it isn't all bad really, because I spent most of this week cleaning up our bedroom, yay! :) Here's how it looked like after I removed all our things (save for the furniture):

So clean and neat right?! I wish it could stay this way forever but unfortunately, I have to put back the kids' homeschooling items, their clothes and toys. We are co-sleeping that's why all their stuff are in our bedroom. But I know we will not be co-sleeping forever so I'm just taking this one day at a time, and not get overwhelmed with all the stuff. I can do this! Haha!

that motherhood thing

Yep, motherhood, that's what kept me from blogging this week. Plus cold, rainy nights~ haha! Yep, I just slept like a baby through the past nights and did not even attempt to blog. I have no idea what happened to Davao this week: it has been raining HEAVILY every single night, with loud thunders to boot. The girls often wake up in the middle of the night, crying fearfully because of the loud booms :( Thankfully there were no reports of severe flooding in our city.

Anyway, I can't believe my previous post was last week! I actually have a schedule of posts but I just haven't had the time to follow it. Motherhood shifted into high gear this week and who am I to not follow it right? Our homeschooling hours in the morning were longer because the kids were more than interested than usual to do activities (outdoor and school ones), and then they got sick one after the other with colds which made them extra clingy all day long. There goes my me-time / "serious" blogging time. 

Homeschool Saturday Wrap-up 2015: Weeks 2 and 3

Hello everyone! Welcome to the first edition of Homeschool Saturday Wrap-up. Twice a month (or bi-monthly if you prefer that term), I will be doing a round-up of our homeschool activities for the previous 2 weeks. I hope that this peek into our Davao homeschooling life will help you / give you an idea how to run your own homeschool too :) Enjoy the photo overload! Haha!

Week 2: January 4 - January 10, 2015

Jan 5: First day of school for 2015!

Jan 6: Big blocks and Lego bricks the whole afternoon :) 

Davao Homeschooling Resources: Offline Edition

Hello, hello! A handful of moms asked me where I get my homeschooling items here in Davao City and I shared with them the few stores that I buy from. I figured it would make a good post in case there's someone out there searching "where to buy homeschool items in Davao" :) Without much further ado, here's my top 3 favorite stores for our homeschooling needs:

1. BOOKSALE - This is a bookstore that sells preloved books so it's very, very affordable. I bought several almost-new Level 1 reading books from them for only P20 each! My usual budget when I go rummaging in BookSale is P100-150, and that's good for 5-10 books already. Frugal me is very happy! :) BookSale has branches in different Davao malls. It's in SM Ecoland (second floor), NCCC Matina (ground floor), SM Lanang to name a few. Here's some of our photos while visiting BookSale and the books we bought from it:

Recent rummage in BookSale, mid-2014 in SM Ecoland I think.

All the Christmas books here (left side) are from BookSale. That awesome Charlie Brown Christmas was only P75 and in mint condition! Love love!

Hardbound books of classic nursery songs with hand / body movements (Eensy Weensy Spider, Row Row Your Boat, This Little Piggy, etc) for only P25 each! I bought all I could find, 7books in all, hihi! That's the stack of books in lower left :)

From 2013! This is in NCCC Matina BookSale :) Aside from story books, there's also school activity books here and non-fiction (animals, plants, science) for your homeschool subjects.

New Year Week 2015

Good morning! How was your weekend everyone? Us, the Davao Homeschooling Family, had a restful one~ thanks to the cold weather which let us sleep in late til 8am. Yesss! ;-) To start off this week's blog posts, we'll go back to the very first week of the year first, New Year Week 2015. It had been a hectic one for us: traveling by sea and land, back to back to back parties, sick kid, and the usual shenanigans of under-5 kids. Phew! But now, looking back, I thank the Lord for it. It had strengthened my one word resolution for 2015, and it made our homeschooling family of four even closer :) Here are the week's highlights:

12/28: After one night in Samal (see our Christmas 2014 post and scroll to bottom), we stayed one night in Waterfront Insular Hotel~ one of the oldest luxury resort hotels in Davao :) Highlight of this day: our Vinta Bar date (lower right pics above) where I had my first alcoholic drink since getting pregnant in 2009 and breastfeeding since 2010. Awesome buzzzzz! ;-)

12/29: The fun continues in Waterfront! The kids truly loved the warm jacuzzi and enjoyed beachcombing too :) They also loved the breakfast buffet spread in Cafe Uno (not in pic). Maybe I should write a separate post on our Waterfront staycation, hmm..

Top 3 Gifts for Homeschoolers

Christmas may be over but we're not done opening gifts. It's not because we received too many gifts but because I don't let the girls open ALL gifts during the holidays. You know how it is when you let kids open everything at once: they get bored with the gifts all at once too! And you are left with bored kids and rejected toys (all the while coping from the holiday stress). So not fun at all! And the precious gifts aren't appreciated properly also, plus the kids miss the value of gift-giving.

And thus, until now (nearing mid-January), we still have presents to open :)  Here are the top 3 favorite gifts that my Davao homeschoolers received (so far) for Christmas 2014:

1. BRICKS AND BLOCKS! Whether it be Lego, Megabloks, Fisher-Price Little People Building Sets- you can never go wrong with blocks (except probably when the kids don't clean up and the 'rents step on a Lego block~ major aw! haha). Plus it fosters bonding time with the child and parent as they build blocks together :) My kids' paternal aunt and uncle got them Lego Friends sets while we gifted our youngest with the Fisher-Price blocks. Small bricks and big blocks~ perfect for their fine and gross motor (hand) skills!

Check how it looks like when fully built in Amazon :)

One Word for 2015: Cherish

Have you heard of "One Word"? It's a rather new trend where, during the start of the year, instead of making New Year resolutions, you choose one word that will guide the way you live your life that entire year. Resolutions are easily broken / forgotten, but one word? It will echo in your brain every single day ;-) I've first heard of this in 2013. Back then, my one word was SIMPLIFY. Here's a little background why I chose it: since my college days, I have simplified my life to have time for what is important, to lessen my carbon footprint, to be able to live freely without worrying about money. I lived this simplified lifestyle for a good 12 years when 2009 came and I found out we were pregnant.

source: http://meganklauerdesign.blogspot.com/2012/12/one-little-word-2013-simplify.html

Finding out we were pregnant set me in panic mode. Because nothing is simple when you have kids right? Need money to buy clothes, feeding bottles, beddings, toys, etc, etc. The list was seemingly endless. We managed when we had our first baby in 2010. When the youngest was born in 2012, I was sorely missing my simple single life. Then I realized that except for the commercial crap I've been buying for the kids, the rest of my parenting style was "simple".

first day high!

And just like that, we're back to homeschooling! :) It's as if the hectic Christmas holidays didn't happen and we're just rolling along our "normal" routine. Unfortunately, I'm reminded everyday that the holidays did happen because there's a huge stash of opened gifts by our bedroom door that I didn't clean up yet. Hohoho! #OrganizeMe2015 is clearly not happening in our home! But... we'll talk about organization in another post as today is all about our first day of homeschool for 2015!

If you're a bit confused with the post's title, it refers to the feeling of optimism or excitement ("high") during the first day of school. Which is what January 5, 2015 was in our home :) And instead of slowly easing into our homeschool routine, we jumped right into it after breakfast! I remember when I was a kid that I dreaded going back to school after the Christmas or summer breaks; but thankfully, our two girls are excited to do school activities again.

The Eldest (right) wanted to color her Jollibee placemat (from her cousin's birthday party) while The Youngest started her pre-writing exercises. Her book is wipe-clean and is a gift from her aunt. Thank you Aunty Rye! She loves it and finished half of the book in one sitting, w00t! Our toddler's focus is definitely improving :) After all the writing and coloring, we had our reading and Math lessons with this awesome flip book:

Happy New Year!

Hey, hey dear readers! Sorry for the lack of updates. It's been a hectic New Year Week as I anticipated in our previous post. We still have one more party this Saturday (plus our eldest is sick!) so I'll keep this post sweet and short. I'm pretty sure your home is quite busy too as the holidays are wrapping up :) Without further much ado, here's our family Happy New Year card:

THIS 2015, CHERISH YOUR FAMILY.

Aren't our kids adorable? Haha! The youngest is such a ham. That's her new pose: eyes closed with tongue out, lol! This wonderful photo of ours was taken in Samal last December 27 during hubby's family reunion. So happy we finally had a decent family picture before 2014 ended! Thank you so much Joebert for taking a lot of photos of our family :) If you're reading this, your effort is very much appreciated.

The lovely frame and wordart, by the way, is from the awesome Rhonna Designs app. I highly recommend you install this app asap if you like to play with your photos like me, hihi! It's available in the Apple App Store and Google Play. It also has a partner design app called RD Magic which I haven't tried yet as it's only available for iOS. Can't wait for the Android version to come out! <3

And before I type more photo editor app recommendations (I have lots!), let me close this post already, haha! Have a wonderful and prosperous 2015 everyone! Homeschooling posts will be back next week. So stay tuned for that dear homeschoolers! :)