School Days, School Days

I've been sorely neglectful of my blog in the past few weeks. Not only have we been extremely busy, but my laptop (my favorite blog-writing tool) has been out of commission, awaiting my dear hubby's attention. Yay! He fixed it! 

We have had a difficult school year and  we are a little bit "behind" schedule. (As homeschoolers there really is no such thing as "behind", but we are behind where I'd hoped to be at this point in the year.) So as a reminder to myself and an encouragement to others who may also be a little "lagging" in their school year plans, I decided to post some pics of what our school days look like. Hopefully, this will help me to keep on going as we school through this summer to get back "on track". :)

Rebekah's favorite subject and past-time: reading a good book.

Rachel LOVES to write and she does it very well!

Joshua knocks out some seatwork while drowning out background noise with his favorite Christian music.

Our schoolroom. I LOVE our kidney table for working with my students individually or in small groups. We also have our daily Bible reading all together here. (I also LOVE my white board. It is just a full-sized shower board purchased at Home Depot. Very cheap and works great!)

The other side of the room has Joshua's desk and the computer area, where they do Rosetta Stone and listen to their Scripture memory songs. 

The Baby Container :)

Another baby container ~ containing a sweetheart! 

Large Family Living ~ The Buddy System

For my first post on "Large Family Living", I've decided to talk about our buddy system. This is not an original idea. I've heard of many other large families using some sort of similar system. I remember reading that the Duggars use a buddy system.

Photo Credit

I really didn't feel the need for a buddy system until I had 6 children. The younger 3 were 3 and under and I was feeling a little overwhelmed with getting them where we needed to go. Carseats especially were a real chore for me. I usually called on an older child to help, but I started to hear arguments between them. ("I did it last time, now it's your turn!") 

That's when I decided to pair them off for carseat duty. I put the youngest of the three "big" kids with the oldest of the three "little" kids. Then I worked my way out, so that my oldest child was paired with the baby. (He happens to be the only boy, so that works well for me with the heavy baby carrier!)

When the 7th child came along, I moved the buddies so that the oldest is still with the youngest and moved inward, leaving the middle child with no buddy. This works well since she is now old enough to buckle her own seat belt and put on her own coat, but not really old enough to be in charge of a younger buddy. 

So each big kid is in charge of getting his/her buddy to the van and buckled in if they need help. When we arrive at a destination, the big buddy is in charge of unbuckling the car seat for the ones who need help and getting that little buddy into the building or the shopping cart or the stroller. 

This has been such a BIG help for me! 

The buddy system also comes in handy when I need help with other tasks such as getting coats on children. 

Does your family  have a buddy system? I would love to hear more ideas for using this system to make life run more smoothly! :)