Occasionally I talk about homeschooling ..

Sorry about the work post yesterday. I just needed to whine a little. Since this is primarily a homeschooling blog I'll tell you what we've been doing in school this week. Today, everyone did their morning list without any complaining, whining or bargaining, which has been happening a lot lately. After finishing his morning list, my youngest went to his reading corner to read. (It's a corner of my bedroom that he's equiped with a blanket, pillow, light and fan.) He read for probably 45 minutes this morning on his own. In the afternoons, he and I are working on word attack skills, so he can not panic when he sees a big word and guess, he knows how to break it down. It's taking a while, but he's getting better at it each day.

My daughter has also been reading a lot lately. She did something that got her grounded from her favorite thing, beading, and so had to spend a couple of days doing other things. She made about 10 pot holders and read a couple of books during that time. ;-) She's been a good reader for a long time, but is still a reluctant writer. I've been making her write paragraphs each day and also added a grammar workbook to her daily list.

Oldest son is doing better with his history since he's been doing the notebooking with us as well as the reading. He's an artist and so his notebooking pages have been really good. I brought home a bunch of books on spying and codes and ciphers from the library and he's been reading those and then showing them to the other 2 kids and this morning they were all making secret ciphers and trying to get their siblings to decode them. That's the tricle down theory of education being put to use - just give the book to the oldest and let him share it if he wants. If he finds it interesting, he'll show it to them and read passages to them out of it.

I've got a Mom's Night Out with the homeschool moms tonight so we spent part of the time this afternoon chopping vegetables for a veggie pizza for me to take tonight and then we ate the leftovers that wouldn't fit on my decorative tray. Yum.