Our New Adventure
Hi All! Sorry it’s been super quite around here. I’ve honestly got blogging on the brain all the time and I have tons of pictures of tutorials and happenings that I’ve been putting together over the last few weeks! I just need to work on actually posting it all!!
Okay, for today’s post, I want to share the beginnings of our new adventure! Over the last half a year, the Lord has been making it increasing clear that we need to homeschool the boys this year (yes, it took me that long to surrender and get on board with this plan!) I am grateful for the Lord’s gentle patience and His faithfulness to bring me to a place of being really really excited for this coming year with my sweet littles 🙂
So in preparation for the coming year, I wanted to have some way of journaling our days and collecting the work and projects we will do. So here are our homeschooling journals!
These can really be made for any kind of scrapbooking/ collecting/ journaling purposes.
If you’d like to make your own, here’s how!
For supplies, we used:
~ hardboard (found at the hardware store in different size sheets. We bought a 2’x4′ sheet. The very helpful man at Home Depot cut it into eight 12″x12″pieces, enough to make 4 journals)
~ 2 pieces of 12″x12″ patterned scrapbook paper
~ 1 Package of Cardstock
~ Mod Podge and brush
~ Spraypaint
~ 3 Hinge rings (I don’t know if that’s what they’re really called, but they are metal rings that open on a hinge. I found them at the craft store.)
~ Letter stickers (I found 3D stickers called “Thickers.” Cute right?)
~ A hole punch
~ I also got some additional patterned srapbooking cardstock that I’ll use later inside the journals
Branden drilled 3 holes in the side of each board using a three hole punch as a guide. Then I spray painted the sides that would not be covered with scrapbook paper.
I seriously can’t spray paint without my hands looking like this :/
Once the paint has dried, use Mod Podge to adhere the scrapbook paper to the non-painted side. Keep the direction of the pattern in mind. I wanted to keep the paper on the outside and paint on the inside.
After painting a layer of Mod Podge on the hardboard, carefully place your paper from one end to the other, making sure to avoid getting air bubbles.
Once that has set, paint another layer of Mod Podge over the paper. Once this dries, it will be give the cover a sealed, textured finish and keep the paper from coming off.
After that has dried, turn the cover over to the painted side and use an exact-o knife to cut out the paper from the holes.
Place the paper over the stack of cardstock and trace the holes. Then use a hole punch to make the holes in the cardstock.
I wanted to give the letters for the boys’ names a little bit of separation from the patterned paper. I cut out a piece of coordinating cardstock for a corner of the cover big enough for the letters to fit. I tore the edges to give it a little bit of a textured look.
After placing the colored cardstock, I Mod Podged it to the bottom corner of the front cover.
Use the hinge rings to attach the hole punched cardstock to the back cover.
Attach the letters for the name to the cover and then the cover to the rest of the journal.
Here is Silas’ finished journal!
And little brother’s too 🙂
Okay, here is our plan: Each week we will study a letter, Bible verse, and sight word. We will have four scheduled days of school, probably about an hour or so each day. The first day will be an introduction to that weeks material; then there will be one day of actual workbook pages, and two days of crafts, activities, recipes or field trips!
All of our work will go up on our homeschool board (details and tutorial to come soon!) and at the end of the week it will all go into our journals! I’m planning to use page protectors to hold anything that can’t be glued or attached to the cardstock.
Most of the material I’m planning to use is free (love it!) If you’d like to follow along or join us, I’ll be posting our lesson plans and sources at the beginning of each week and a recap at the end of the week (here’s hoping I can keep up!)
I really am so excited for all that the Lord is going to do this year! In addition to homeschooling, there are a couple other kind of big things on the horizon for our family 🙂 I really thought for a long time that there was no way I could do this, staying home with the boys all day every day and giving them an education. I mean, how am I at all qualified for that? I know now that there really isn’t much that the Lord calls us to that we are actually qualified for!! And I’m so thankful to be in a place of just depending on and trusting in a faithful God!
Okay, friends, we’re planning on getting school started the first week of July! Hope you’ll join us!!
