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..