Clearing up Confusion

Dear Family and Friends,


Good Morning and Welcome to Blankets Bears and Binkies!

I'm sure a few of you are here for the first time due to my mass email that was sent out telling you to click on this link and read what I have written about homeschool and our family.

It was made known a few weeks ago that most of you feel as though you are out of the loop. I Taylor and Mr. Montana ( Scott ) have decided that Homeschooling is what is best for our family. No this doesn't mean we will be doing it forever nor does it mean that we wont. I take everyday day by day followed by taking it year by year.

For you wonderful blog followers that I have. If there are any of you out there. Bear with me while I walk you all family, friends, and blog junkies through a day in the life at our house.

Before I get to that I would like to say that please weather you are family, friends or bloggers if you ever and I mean EVER have a question about what we do before jumping to all sorts of crazy out of this world conclusions PLEASE just ask me.

Welcome to a day at A.I.C Academy!

A typical day here starts at 7am. Avery, Bella and Chloe are given 2 hours before we start our school day. This two hours is for waking up, eating breakfast, morning chores and getting ready for the day. At 8:45 they are given their 15 minute call until school starts. At this point teeth are brushed and hair is combed. All of this should and will be done by 9am.

Monday - Thursday School Day

9am - Morning Prayer lead by either Avery or Bella. Chloe followers their prayer with one of her own. We bless our school day each and everyday.

9:05am - Calendar

9:10am - Bible
Thanks to Sonlight my children are reading one of the most amazing books I have ever owned. Leading little ones to God. At the end of the lesson we are given a bible verse to look up and read that corresponds with the lesson.

9:45 am - Memory Verse
Over the course of 6 weeks Avery and Bella are learning Psalms 1: 1-6
at the end of the 6 weeks they get to pick and help cook that night. After dinner both of the kiddo's get to recite what they have learned.

10 am - Copywork (handwriting)

10:30am - Reading ( Avery reads to us ) and Phonics

11am - Spelling ( Spelling Tests are on Thursday, if there are any missed words they write them each 4 times and then I retest them on those words on Friday )

11:15 am - Math
Avery is working on Horizons 3rd grade and Bella is working on Horizons K
(Math Tests are given every 10 lessons for Avery)

Noon - Lunch time
During lunch I read aloud to the kids while they eat. At the moment we are reading Charlotts Web.

After the kids are done with Lunch Avery has free time until 1 while I get the Chloe down for a nap.

1pm - History

1:45pm - Creative writing

2pm - Local News - Avery and Bella get to pick a story from the local news they want to tell us about. Then they write a small paper and either draw a picture or we will print a picture from that story. The last thing they wrote and told us about was the Volcano in Ice Land. It's been an on going story they have been working on for the last few weeks.

2:30pm - Clean up from our school day. If there is any unfinished school work that hasn't been finished from the day ie. Copywork, handwriting or reading this is when it is done.

Our School day is always done by 3pm. If we have had a good school day, no tears, fighting to get work finished and things like that. They tend to go out to play or the Wii can be played for a while.

Friday School Day


Before Noon the day is the same


1pm - Science

2pm - Art


We have found that saving Science and Art for Fridays works best.

A.I.C Academy is in session year round. This allows for us to take days off here and there or for times when we have family in town and they get to take a week off to visit!

Both Avery and Bella are testing at grade level and above in many subjects. At times when they have struggled with something it has been addressed and taken care of. I feel they are blessed for this reason. Where they struggle they are given more one on one time to help overcome the struggle. Where they excel they are able to work at higher grade level. All of this wouldn't be possible if they were in either public or private school.

Both Scott and Myself have taken the required classes and courses to be able to homeschool our children in the state of Washington.

Scott and I feel very lucky to be able to home teach our children. Along with that we are very thankful to have found such a WONDERFUL curriculum to use. If it wasn't for Sonlight I'm not sure where we would be or what our children would be doing.

I consider myself lucky and thank God each and everyday for giving me the strength to teach my children at home. He has given our family so much in the last years and continues to show us that we have made the right choice for our family.

For this season in my life I'm a stay at home, homeschooling mama. Do I know what next year will bring? I don't, but I do know that God will let us know what he wants us to do!


I will continue to do weekly blog updates on our homeschooling journey. This way NON of you will be left in the dark and left to question what and how we do things around here.

As always I'm an email or phone call away to answer any questions you might have about OUR choice to homeschool OUR children.

Please feel free to check out the Sonlight curriculum we use at http://www.sonlight.com/
Also you can check out Washington Homeschool Organization at http://washhomeschool.org
and read over the Washington homeschool laws at http://washhomschool.org/homeschooling/law.html

I hope this blog finds everyone happy, healthy and well.

Hugs, loves, Blessings and Best Wishes!
Scott, Taylor, Avery, Bella, and Chloe

PS. All questions can be sent to either my main email or at AIC.Academy@yahoo.com

Busy as a Bee

Gosh I cant believe that it's been 8 long days since I posted last.

I remember a time when blogging was like coffee I had to have every morning. Truth be told I have not lost my urge to blog, but teaching my sweet babies has been at the top of the list this week.

We are swimming in a sea of Wonderful Sonlight books and are knee deep into the first part of The Boxcar Children.
Yesterday I had every intention of blogging after reading Chapter 2 of the book thinking that the big kids would need a break before starting on the next part of our lesson. More than 2 hours later we were just starting on Handwriting. We finished Chapter 2 and I started to close the book to start asking them some questions. I never got a chance to open my mouth...

"What are you doing! Can we read a little bit more? Please, Please, Please"

And that is just what we did we are now almost half way through the book. More than two weeks ahead and my children are remembering EVERYTHING we have read.

Yesterday was a great day in Homeschooling! My children spent all day in their School Informs and couldn't help, but want more. This is when I knew our family had made the right choice to teach our children at home. I couldn't imagine not being around to witness their excitement when they love something they are learning!

I promise tomorrow I'll post for Foto Finish Friday (amy) just for you.

Until Next Time,
Just MOM

PS. For those who are wondering what our Schools uniform is PJ's all day!!!!

Sick x 4

Everyone here in the BB&B house have been super super sick for the past going on almost 2 weeks. That would be the main reason for my lack of blogging . I wonder if I can use that for the reasons why I haven't done much of anything for the past two weeks.

While I was hoping to have something fun to blog about today other than being sick. The sound of my son running and jumping around my bedroom after asking him I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY DIFFERENT times to STOP. Has well taken every ounce of creativeness out of my body for the day.

I'm thinking he might be on eBay by the end of the day today. Either that or my TV and Wii will be on eBay. This boy of mine was up at 2 am playing the Wii.... So I thought that he was full of it when he told us that he has been getting up in the middle of the night to play the Wii. I guess not!

Mr.Montana was up at 4am today to get ready for work. Avery was on the couch bag of chips in hand playing Video Games. Mr. Montana decided to check how old he had been on the darn thing thinking he just got up when he heard him in the shower.... HECK NO NOT MY SON at 4am he had already been on the Wii for 2 hours and 11 minutes. Needless to say he is crazy tired today and hasn't been allowed to play the Wii at all since then.

Should I let you tell him that our new shipment of Sonlight will be here on Saturday or do I have too? He is not going to be a happy guy when he will have school work to do before he even gets to say the word Wii.

Until Next Time,
Just MOM

PS.... Okay not everyone has been sick here. Bella out of all of us is the only one who didnt get the two different spells of the flu and this great cold we all have at the moment.

1-800-ABC-DEFG

Hooked on Phonics Worked for ME!

So when I was younger I always made fun of the Hooked on Phonics commercials. Why I'm not too sure maybe because deep down I'm sure it would have offered a bit of help to my horrid spelling and the reasons why I hated to read aloud in class.

I'm not saying that I couldn't read, but I lacked the confidence that's for sure. In 4th grade I remember reading Number the Stars by Lois Lowry. Still do this day would have to be one of my favorite books ever. Everyone was given a copy of this wonderful book along with a list of who was reading aloud and when. OMG I wish every teacher would have done this. My last name starts with an R and since the list was in alphabetical order by last name I knew I had a few days before I needed to fake being sick so I wouldn't have to read.

To bad this plan backfired on me big time. When my day to read rolled around I did stay home with flu like symptoms that were gone by dinner time that evening. I went to school the next day thinking that I had just pulled off the greatest plan in the whole world. Our days always started with Journal writing then it was time for reading. Everyone helped move desks and we settled in for at least an hour of reading one of the best books ever. Me being me I never fully listen to anyone or anything so when I looked up from my book wondering when they were going to start reading when....

Yes everyone was looking at me! Mrs. 4th grade Teacher looks at me and replies with Taylor please take it from the top of page 56, yes I even remember the page number. So here I am freaked out because everyone was looking at me and waiting on ME! My plan really did SUCK and I guess I missed her talking about the fact that if you miss a day no worries you will be able to read when your back!

How could I have missed that I'm guessing that I wasn't listening then either. I did in fact read, I'm sure I lost everyone after about two words. I hated reading aloud, I felt like everyone was always laughing inside. I would have to ask what words were and would even have trouble saying them. I had to even sound things out and WOW that day I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

After my pages were read I really felt sick. That was the day that I forced myself to start reading more and truly work on reading aloud. Still to this day it isn't my most fav thing to do, but I am able to do it without a problem.

I love reading and everything that has to do with books. Maybe its one of the reasons Mr. Montana and I decided on using Sonlight Curriculum nothing like having a literature based curriculum for a book junkie mom to teach.

So that brings me to today. Avery has always had a hard time with learning his letters and well that makes it hard to learn and know the sounds they make. So I googled Hooked on Phonics and well I just HOPE it works for him. If it doesn't man I'm at a loss... I'm sure I will pull something else out of my homeschooling mom hat, but for now that is all I have.

Number the Stars is one of the greatest books ever. I think it's one that everyone should read, no matter how old you are. It is no longer on Public School's reading lists because it has to do with religion. In a way that is another reason why we as a family have decided to homeschool our children. The idea of being able to teach what we truly believe our children should learn about. There are so many things that today's children are missing out on. So much History that they will never know about, things that have made us who we are today.

Okay so that is Taylor's tip for the day... Head on down to your local bookstore or Library and pick up a copy of Number the Stars by Lois Lowry today! I recommend buying a copy because I can promise you that you will want to read it over and over again.

Until Next Time,

Just MOM