Pre-School Update

It’s only been a day but a decision was made yesterday about how we are going to embark on this journey. The most financial part will be purchasing Sonlights P3/4 Newcomer set. It comes with a great variety of books, a Paren’ts guide, and other accessories. I am considering adding all the books to my cart and then purchasing the construction paper at a craft store or walmart when school shopping starts in August. The set, if we buy it complete, will cost about $300.00 and I want to see if just buying the books that can not be purchased elsewhere will be cheaper opposed to the entire set. I know I can certainly get child safe scissors, construction paper, etc. cheaper during school shopping season however with everything combined in one, I may be making a better deal.

We’re also going to supplement with work books. The Sonlight P3/4 is based mainly around reading and activities but does not include any workbooks. Right now Hooked on Phonics is having a fantastic 70% off sale and you can get an additional 50% off using the SLICK50 promotional code. I’m waiting till tomorrow to make the work book purchases because I am receiving a refund from a purchase I made on ebay. It’s only a $9.20 refund but it was unexpected and it should cover at least 3 different work books including shipping! I’ll also stop at Olli’s over the summer and check out the work books available there. As well as scope out what WalMart, Toys R Us and other online stores may be providing at decent prices.

I likely won’t be purchasing the Sonlight program until the end of the summer but work books I plan to gather over the summer months. And this way, even if we don’t have our ideal package ready at hand yet, we have something to begin until we do have it. Being that our decision to home-school did not happen till late April-Early May we did not have the winter to save to make all these purchases and I want to make sure that buying it, does not affect our family financially. So I’ll save $50.00 every two weeks, $100 a month, and by the end of August have the $300.00 it will cost to buy this preschool set.  I also plan on using School Express’s free work sheets as well. These we’ll be doing in the summer and throughout the school year, if we haven’t completed the ones I already approve of by then.

There are a lot of free home-school work sheet printables available, however, I am nitpicky. Not exactly nitpicky about how they have a certain letter shaped, etc. but I don’t like paper clutter all too much. Having tons of computer printed paper scattered around with doodles is not my idea and I’d rather it all be glued together in a book, opposed to every where around the house. I do think I’ll print out their entire alphabet work sheets for Ages 3-6 for both kiddos and bind them so they make a book but that may be the extent I go to until the kiddos have learned about paper control.

A few days…

I haven’t written in a couple of days and I think that is alright. I didn’t create this blog as a ‘every day writing’ type of gig. I would like to get to that point some day but I don’t like to write when I have nothing to write about. Doesn’t really end up well, at least for me.

The first two weeks of May were, well a struggle, just a bit. We ended the two weeks with a $1.82 in our checking and had to take out of our savings and brought that total back to zero. We only had a hundred in there opposed to the two hundred we had planned. Since the last two weeks of the month are a bit more breathable, we plan to replace that hundred with the due hundred on top of it as well.

Budgetting is rough. Not really ‘rough’ as in hard to go by but really getting a good estimate of what you will actually be purchasing. We’ve gone over our grocery budget but we did throw in a cheap printer and a few extras here and there as well. The printer was $30.00 but it’ll pay itself off here soon as I begin to print (and USE) coupons. Right now I think instead of focusing on stockpiling and fantastic deals, I’ll just get into the habit of using coupons period. Of course, if I happen to come by a really good deal, for something we use frequently, I will snag that. That is a given. I almost had a good deal for free taco seasoning (and we use a TON of taco seasoning) but the coupon wasn’t available when I went to go print it. We lose some and win some. I’ve been following sites like Money Saving Mom, Deal Seeking Mom, Baby Good Buys, etc. to see what kind of deals are available.

We’ve been doing a pretty good job at keeping track of our receipts as well. Some have gone ‘missing’ but I’m able to look at our bank account and see what was spent so that I can log it correctly. Though losing reciepts isn’t going to help me at the end of the month when it comes to overall budget totals and estimating June’s budget.

I have made leaps and bounds on my home management notebook. Today I sat and went through all my old Fly Lady stuff, discarded what I no longer want to use or found useful and implemented a little system. For daily use I’m using the pocket docket by Simple Mom and I printed out the emergency information sheets from Organizing Your Way.

Laundry is slowly getting done. But thats a task that will always remain. I have a sort of system going with it but right now I’m just doing it as it goes. I’m sure I’ll fall into a true system as time goes on.

Why researching pays off.

With the new baby on the way and with this one being a girl, just like my first two, there aren’t a lot of things that need to be replaced or purchased. Thankfully. However, the house we are living in, the basement slowly leaks moisture from one side. Thus my research begins because when resurrecting the old infant car seat from the basement, we discovered mold on the seat pad, canopy and head support rest.

I wasn’t sure if we could actually replace those three things. I was sure that we could probably find replacement straps, snaps, etc. if we need to. Which we may need to replace the straps but as of right now, I think they are going to work. So I popped a search into google ‘Grace Car Seat Cover Replacement’.

It immediately listed Graco’s website. I had looked there a couple of years ago but didn’t recall being able to order a replacement. I went ahead and checked. To my surprise, pop in the model number, manufacturing date and here is an entire list of replacement parts for my exact car seat. Including the seat pad, canopy and head rest. And even more lucky for me, the seat pad, canopy and head rest are combined into one group for $40.00.

Now I could go out and buy a Safety 1st car seat for $60.00 and some change but it’s nice to be able to reuse what we originally had. We really invested into this current car seat when it came out, we spent $150.00 on the car seat alone. Safety before Financial gain was what we had in mind. We didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars but we have always relied on Graco from day one and knew this car seat would last us.

So if we wanted to replace the entire car seat and get a replica, we’d easily be spending another $100 – $150.00 for a car seat. If we went cheap and didn’t want to focus on safety, reputation, reviews, etc. we could spend $20.00 more than the replacement pads for a brand new car seat. I think I’ll stick with my original car seat and just buy the replacement pads. Yay!

Let’s add in that I am a fan of ebay as well. I’ve been hawking ebay for a small lot of 0-3 month summer girl clothes. Both of my oldest girls we’re winter babies so I don’t have any summer newborn clothes, whatsoever. Yesterday, I scored a lot of 30 items, name brand, lightly used baby girl clothes for $32.00. Which means, each item cost me a total of $1.32 (including shipping). Better than buying 30 items from walmart at an easy $7.00 – $10.00 per item. That definitely satisified me. One season of clothes down. Just need to buy some fall items and I’m good to go! I’m thinking of adding to the older girls wardrobe from ebay as well for this summer and fall. But we’ll get the baby’s stuff done first.