Maybe A Little Break.

We've kept pretty busy lately and I'm feeling the need for a little break. We've got 3 events next weekend, a wedding, a baby shower and my daughter's 10th birthday, so we'd better rest up between now and then, right? I have not too much planned for this week and we may go ahead and gently start school on Wednesday when the county school kids do, just so we'll be on the same schedule as them.

A part of me thinks we should clean and organize the house completely before we start, but that probably won't happen! We'll probably just do the minimum and start. If we waited until everything was perfect, we'd never get started!

When to start, when to start?

The public schools are starting here on August 2nd. My oldest son is ready for us to start school too, but I'm not. I am still not sure what curriculum I'm going to use with him! Somebody please make a suggestion! For my younger kids, I have KONOS and my daughter has requested the Obedience unit, not because she wants to become more obedient, but because it has a subunit on Kings and Queens. I have no reason not to do that unit, so we'll do it. Now I'll probably sit and down and carefully write out a schedule that we won't follow, LoL.

No School But ...

We're still not doing scheduled school but still, there's some educational stuff going on. My youngest son is still as always) relating everything to math. He subtracts days on the calendar counting down to things. He talks about things like if we had a million cookies, how many could each of us have. Last night he was trying to figure out how many seconds are in a year. I'm not sure if he ever got to the answer or not but he just finished 2nd grade and he was trying to figure it out in his head, so I think any progress was pretty good. Last I heard, he was trying to multiply 60 x 60.

All of the kids decided last night to go through our modest collection of DVDs and watch some they hadn't watched for a while since our DVD player was broken for a while. They ended up watching a Leapfrog video that I got to help my youngest with reading and then a kid's exercise video called Kick to Get Fit Kids (which they exercised along with). Then they got out a yoga DVD of mine that I've only done once and did a little yoga. After that, they did Kick to Get Fit again.

So, there was a lot of PE and some reading going on at my house last night, thanks to our DVD player. It was all for fun and I didn't count it as a school day, but it was good.

Where's the T?

On the post below, I left out the T in printables, making it prinables. I'm leaving it as it is, as a reminder that we all make mistakes. Even though I type for a living, as a medical transcriptionist, I still leave letters out (and worse!). Fortunately, the person who invented the software program that I work in for my job, built in an automatic spellcheck at the end, which is a very good idea. Now I only have to really watch myself for those mistakes that the spellchecker won't catch, like the one I almost do, all the time; "die" for "diet" and the opposite, "diet" for "die". This interchange of words can make for some very funny sentences. I once typed "The patient was feeling very depressed and stated 'I want to diet.'" Not funny for the patient (whom I hope is feeling much better now), but funny for me, because I hate diets! The other really goofy typo I make is sometimes typing the word "head" for "headache". I'm not sure why I do this but it does make some hilarous sentences as in "The patient came into the ER claiming that she has had a head for 3 days."

Anyway, mistakes happen. We're still not back to school yet, so no homeschool news at this time.

Free Phonics Prinables.

This is a good site if you have a pre-reader or one who just needs to brush up on reading skills when you start back to school this fall.

Busy, busy ...

So much for the lazy days of summer. I don't know who that pertains to, but it is certainly not me. Today, I worked the morning on my day job, picked blackberries and then spent the afternoon working on my Cafe Press store. I am going to count that as a second job because it does take a lot of time. So, I worked at my first job, then my second job and now I'm going to take the kids to VBS. Last night I stayed and helped a little but tonight, I just don't want to. I'm tired. I'm one of those people who has a hard time saying no, but sometimes you really need to. I need a nap! Hey, does blogging count as my third job? (Although, as you can tell, I only spend a few minutes blogging each day, so probably not!) Where does homeschooling fit in? Third? Fourth? It doesn't sound like I have my priorities straight, does it? I'll probably slow down on the Cafe Press work when school starts again. Hopefully, I can have the store in pretty good shape by then.

Yesterday.

I think I should count yesterday as a school day. We had 2 field trips, 1 to the library and 1 to the vet. The vet had just done an emergency c-section and delivered 12 baby puppies and the kids got to see them! We were waiting in the exam room for quite a while and we studied the wallpaper, which had paw prints on it, and tried to estimate how many there were (math). We went to McDonald's and tried to figure out how to get everyone something to eat or drink for $2.14 and 2 coupons. (economics?) After the library trip, my youngest son had to sit down and read 8 books because the summer reading program at the library is over today and that's how many books he needed for the rewards (reading). This one should also be a lesson in not procrastinating, but I doubt it will take. Last night they went to VBS at a friend's church and played badminton afterwards (PE).

Summer.

Summer is a fleeting thing around here, at least for the public schoolers. They are on a "year-round" schedule that basically means a shorter summer break, about 8 weeks, and a longer fall break, winter break and spring break. We try to follow the schedule somewhat so that on fall breaks and spring breaks, we can do some field trips and fun stuff with the kids public school friends and cousins. That means we need to start back with school the first week of August! I'm not ready! Help!

Little Dude!

The other night, we were the last ones to leave the pool locker room. My daughter was still changing. My 8-year-old was finished changing. He had gone in the women's locker room with us since my oldest son was not with us that night. Suddenly the lights in the locker room went off. I told my youngest to go let the lifeguards know that we were still there, so they wouldn't lock us in. Instead of going and actually telling them, he just stuck his head out the door and looked at them. I heard one of the lifeguards say, "There's a little dude still in here!" and then I heard someone else say "Oops, I turned off the lights!" The lights came back on just as my daughter finished up and we all three walked out. One of the lifeguards said "Whew! Little dude has a family!" They thought that he was all alone in there, I guess. LoL.

Selective Listening.

Yesterday, my 13-year-old son was in his room reading. My 8-year-old son asked me to make tacos, one of our favorite foods. I took a few minutes to fix a quick meal and then, when my 8-year-old walked back into the kitchen, I said "The tacos are ready". Within seconds, my 13-year-old was in the kitchen from his room, and saying "Tacos?" I commented on how he'd been able to hear me from that distance, since I was speaking in a normal tone of voice, not yelling, and he said "I listen for food words or my name." LoL.

Scheduling Joy

If you've read this blog very much, you know that I'm always making new schedules, vainly trying to fit everything in. I found a really cool site for free printable schedules, planners and calendars. Here it is. I've printed my favorite already and now I'm going to check out the rest of her site.

Someone has been paying attention.

My youngest son and I were watching TV the other day (I think it was HGTV, my favorite!). They were showing beautiful scenes of green forests and fields and the narrator made a kind of, um, weird philosophical statement about the elements of the earth coming together and blending to make the the colors of the earth, the green, the blue ... etc. My son said to the TV "It the cholorophyll that makes them green!"

Still no planning ...

I just haven't done it. Not even in pencil. I really can't decide what to do with my oldest son, curriculum-wise, and until I decide that, I don't want to decide what to do with the younger two kids. I would kind of like to coordinate their units somewhat, but that seems like it would take so much energy ... so anyway, its not done. This time last year, I felt so good about homeschooling. We were reading Swiss Family Robinson and getting a bunch of the reading for the next unit done and feeling really energized ... but this year, no such thing. We're reading (as usual) Hank the Cowdog and making no plans. Sigh. Maybe this week.

Planning.

This is the time of the year when homeschool parents traditionally do a lot of planning and map out the coming year. I haven't done any yet. Not surprising, I know, with my track record of planning as I go, but this year, I'd really like to have a master plan all laid out, at least a rough schedule of the units we are going to do and what days we will do school and what days we will take off. I may work on it a bit and pencil in a few things. I'll let you know how it goes.

27th Carnival of Homeschooling.

The 27th Carnival of Homeschooling blogs is up now. I'm enjoying reading these things. Here's the link.

More on Eyes.

Yesterday, my Dad called me and told me that he had gotten his contact lens stuck in his eye. I am a long time contact lens wearer and pretty good about putting them in and getting them out so he wanted to see if I could help him get this out. I got a flashlight and looked in his eye but didn't see anything, so he ended up going to a walk in clinic. The nurse practitioner at the clinic got it out easily, then she said, "You know, of all the people who've come in here over the years, thinking that they have a contact lens stuck in the eye, you are the only one who actually had one in there." I thought it was funny.

Sticks and eyes, revisited.

My youngest son came walking into the house with a stick again today. I reminded him that sticks were off limits until we could get some protective eyewear. He walked back out with the stick and I thought he was getting rid of it. He came back a few minutes later and said that his older brother was making the stick into a musical instrument. Thinking he might be annoyed that his older brother took his stick away, I asked him if he thought that was good or bad. He gave me that look that says "duh" (although thankfully he didn't say it) and spoke to me slowly, as if I might not understand and said "It's good. I don't poke myself in the eye with musical instruments."

Revised Summertime List.

This list is working for me, so I'm proud of it. The kids have to do some things from the list before any electronic media comes on. They still officially get the same amount of screen time as always, but with the list, sometimes they get interested in something and forget to turn on the game cube or TV. Yesterday, the game cube did not come on at all. Instead, they started drawing pictures and making notebooks to keep their pictures in. Here's the revised list for the next week or so, depending on how it is going and depending on when we start school.

Go on a bike ride.
Catch a bug.
Give Lucy a treat. (Lucy, our outside dog, is loving this.)
Brush the cats and dogs.
Board Game.
Card Game.
Dice game.
Hide and Seek.
Whammy ball. (This is our own made-up game and the rules constantly change, so I can't exactly explain it.)
Frisbee.
Trampoline.
Jump rope.
Science experiment. (We have a book and a kit for this.)
Read a book.
Reading treasure hunts.
Draw a picture.
Paint a picture.
Make something out of playdough or modeling clay.
Make something out of Zomes, atollos, legos or tinkertoys.
Set up marble run.
Dress 2 Barbies.
Set up the Barbie doll house.
Coloring book, 2 pages.
Make a maze.
Make an obstacle course.

There's also a chore section to the list but it hasn't gone as well, since they are pretending that the chore section does not exist, but we are working on it.