I have had a blast photographing my kids for the month of February, 28 days straight. Picking up my camera every single day has taught me so much about my style, my kids, what I want in a photo, and “seeing” the photo before I take it.

I learned that I love my old camera that I thought I hated, (you know, the one that I “upgrade” from?) Most, if not all of these photos were taken with my discontinued 6 megapixel camera. I don’t use the best equipment out there, not even close, but I sure do focus all my attention on rocking what I have! It really doesn’t matter what kind of camera you use, if you don’t know how to use it, then your photos will not turn out like you imagine.

I learned that I love color! I loved this black & white challenge, and I feel I have close to perfected my black & white workflow, but boy do I need some color on my blog! I’m sure in the coming days you will see a color explosion from me!!

I learned that I love to blog. Just love it. This isn’t just a place for me to drop my photos and run, I love to hang out here and read your comments. I encourage you to subscribe to my blog’s feed, click the little “RSS” button at the top of  the blog or the “subscribe” link on the header. There are many different ways to subscribe to make it convenient for you. I know I don’t have time to surf blogs all day, so I get all my favorite ones straight to my email inbox.

If you are a lurker here, please comment on this post! I would love to see who has been following me through this fun journey! Don’t be shy…commenting is fun and it keeps us bloggers happy and inspired :)

Ok…enough talking…here’s my last photo of the month.

Day 28/28: No grand plans for today’s photo. This is exactly how I wanted it to look. I love taking these outstretched arms photos, I took quite a few when I did my 52 weeks of self photos last year! I wanted my last photo to be very unposed, nothing fancy, just us. We are all in our pajamas, just up from a Sunday afternoon nap (yes, even me!) Zach is of course doing his thing, Abby is ever trying to get her whole body in the photograph, and Lily…well…Princess Liliana is just fed up with the whole process and has no intention of hiding it.

{Come back tomorrow to see my favorite outtakes from the month!! Photographing three children every day makes for some interesting and very unposed photos!}

Much love to the ladies who participated in this challenge with me!

Juanita

Jeanette

Jessica

Shan

Day 27/28

Day 26/28:  Abby woke up sick, so she stayed home from school today. Even though it changes the routine and it is a bit overwhelming, I do love having all my kids home with me. I love seeing Abby read and watching Lily want to copy every single thing she does. I love watching Zach put his guard down and get interested in what his girly sisters are doing. I love seeing my babies all spend time together…even if it is for a brief moment.

Day 25/28: I have no words for this photograph. LOL. Seriously, I love my kids but they drive me batty :)

ps. Thank you to those who have found my blog lately, (through the Me Ra Koh photography contest or otherwise!) I truly appreciate your visits and emails! I have received some emails asking common questions about my photography, how I edit, my camera equipment, etc. I never have and never will claim to be a genius on the subject of photography (or any subject except for how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!) But I will try my best and if you have any questions for me (and they don’t have to be only about photography!) I will be devoting a whole blog post to some Q & A! This should be fun, so ask away! Email me at amy@amyschuffphotography.com with your questions!

Day 24/28:  She’s not well today, yucky nose that I thought was gone last week and now it is back. Baby cousin has a bad cold too…they probably got it from each other, with all that sharing paci’s the kids do these days :)

There were some issues with voting on the Me Ra Koh photography contest, so the deadline has been extended until Sunday, 6pm PST!! Please take a moment to vote for me! I am very excited about the prizes, but most of all, Me Ra has been a huge inspiration in my journey as a photographer and it would be so honoring to be chosen! Plus, if the votes reach to 600, a random voter will be chosen to win a Sony camera (which is awesome in itself!) Follow this link for the details!

Day 23/28:  I chose this photo for today to put to rest a rumor that my children are perfect posers and are always cooperative when I want to take pictures of them.  Usually, they are all for it and sometimes they actually enjoy the process, but sometimes it is the absolute last thing they want to do on the entire face of the universe.

It rained today

and she had beautiful hair

and a cankersore on her tongue

that apparently only hurt when I wanted to take photos of her

and not when she was watching tv

or playing with her brother

or eating a snack

After two photos snapped

I gave up…

I just love homeschoolers. Moms who homeschool, dads who do, kids who are homeschooled. Especially since they are so horribly unsocialized and weird in every sense of the word…(can you hear the sarcasm??) I was homeschooled by my amazing mother until sophomore year. I’ve known and now know kids to be homeschooled all of high school, but at the time of my sophomore, going to a small private school was a good choice for me (looking back…I should have just stayed at home, but I learned many valuable lessons  in that private school, some so valuable that I quickly blocked out of my memory ;) )

We are a homeschooling family. Abby stayed at home last year for kindergarten, and Zach is here with me for preschool. I will be sending Zach to the wonderful small private school that Abby attends right now (the school we call “homeschool on steroids!”) But every year we will reevaluate to see if it is the right decision for our kids.  I plan on keeping Lily at home for as long as she needs it.

I thought I would share some of my homeschooling activities with you. I am by no means a super homeschooler, I only have a preschooler at home, but I do feel I have a wealth of information on the theories of how to homeschool since I was taught at home for so long. I will be implementing those with Zach and with all my kids as we are always in a state of home schooling.

As far as I am concerned, it is called HOMEschooling…not having school at home. That means we do not sit for 6+ hours at the table and do worksheet after worksheet, nor will we ever, even if we homeschool in high school. The fun of homeschooling is the flexibility of being at home, of being in our own environment and taking advantage of all that we have at our fingertips.

We do projects, play playdough, paint, color, grow a garden (well, we will try to!), plant flowers, make dinner together, and complete chores. School is not just busy work, we learn by example and by using our hands. I want to raise children who know how to cook and cook well. I want them to know how to sew, how to write beautifully and how to type fast.  Homeschool is more about teaching life than about teaching letters and numbers. Letters and numbers are integrated into everything we do! How many eggs do we put in the pancakes? How do we spell egg? What color is the egg? Let’s see what happens when we drop and egg on the floor, on the cement, on a soft towel? and on and on and on…..

I use Ann Ward’s “Learning at Home” curriculum (this book was written in the 80’s and I LOVE the Character Building lessons) and then multiple online sites for preschool print outs. My favorites are Totally Tots (which is really pre-prek but I feel that I can integrate what they do in Tot school quite well with Zach and will be starting some activities with Lily soon) and Confessions of a Homeschooler.  I have so many more sites that I use and will be recommending in the future. But if you are just starting out, those two sites and literally give you everything you need to start on the right foot with your preschooler or elementary school student.

This week we are focusing on the letter J and number 8. On the left he’s putting together his “counting book of 8″, on the right he is putting together our memory verse for the week. No, he can’t read the cards, but he is learning sight recognition and can read the number card.

A simple activity I have him do is go to his room and collect 8 (or the other number we are working on) of one object. This can also be done with colors, shapes, etc. On the right this simple activity is placing the correct number of clips on a paper plate.

{I hope to have more shares about our homeschooling experience! I will be filing them under category “Homeschool”.}

Day 22/28:  One of my favorite rooms in the house. In the summer we eat dinner in there, do schoolwork and my desk is there. I don’t spend nearly enough time in the sunroom. But the kids do, a lot. It is their favorite place to color, paint and create.

Day 21/28: It was one of those days where absolutely nothing could console her except for a bath. That is my go-to option when she is having a bad day. A warm bubble bath does a soul good, even for 2 year olds.

Please take a moment to vote for my photo on Me Ra Koh’s photography blog! You have until tomorrow (Monday the 22nd) to vote. My photo is #4 titled “Grandbaby”. A random voter will win a Sony camera!

Day 20/28: We have many names for her…Abs/Sweet Abs/Little Abs/Labs/Abba Labby…my favorite is Abbalicious. I saw this shirt at Old Navy (on clearance of course!!) and I knew it would be in the picture of the day.

I couldn’t resist showing some color images. In case you were wondering, this is how a session with Abbalicious goes…

…to finally end up with this: