A high school record book.

I looked a lot of places on the web for something to track high school records with and kind of keep a portfolio in and I found a good one. It's from Rainbow Resoure Homeschooling supply and I think it's going to work well for us. Here it is. It will help me keep up with what my son has done and what he still needs to do. I printed out the minimum graduation requirements for Kentucky and taped it inside the front cover and I put in the classes he's taking now and I'm working on getting his grades in there. I'm very happy with it and it was hard as heck to find, so I thought I'd share.

Grocery Shopping.

I am a terrible grocery shopper. Yesterday I made a list of 2 items and then left the list at home. On the way to the store I realized I'd forgotten the list, but figured I'd remember them, only 2 things. Right? Wrong. Despite filling the cart full to overflowing and spending a crazy amount of money, I forgot the two items. I realized it in the middle of the night. The thought woke me up.

I would like to be one of those people who plan the menu and shop accordingly, thereby saving a lot of money, but I haven't made it yet. I'm so, uh, let's face it, spacey, that I wonder if I could stick to it if I did it. Still, I might need to give it some thought and try it again. Groceries are getting so incredibly expensive these days.

End of day report.

Today was a pretty good school day. We've mostly concluded our study of WW1 and we're getting ready to study the time period between the wars. Someone here mentioned the History Of Us books by Joy Hakim and I discovered that our library has them and now we're using them instead of the textbook we were using. It is such an improvement. I've been reading ahead in book 9, just because I'm interested. The folders that the kids did for their notebooks turned out really well. I'll try and post pictures of them when I find my camera.

On the work front, it was great, because it was my day off. That's always good. I didn't get as much done as I wanted to. I really intended to get my closet cleaned out, but I didn't. I got some high school planning done, some teaching, some laundry, some cleaning and a TON of dishes (still with more to do). I also went to the grocery but I didn't get my closet cleaned out. Oh well. Tomorrow's another day, I guess.

On the foster care front, we're not getting anywhere. Our paperwork is done, but our home renovation is still not. When did we start this? Anyway, our worker won't approve us until the heavy duty saw is out of the house.

Let's see, do I have any more 'fronts' to discuss? I guess I've picked up on some of the WW1 language from our study. I guess I've got nothing else going on so that's it for today.

The pros and the cons.

While I was working this afternoon, my husband took my 2 older kids to his parent's house. They were gone a couple of hours. My youngest stayed home with mom, thinking that this would be a great chance to play Game Cube and X-Box uninterupted. He played Guitar Hero. Every few minutes, he'd come and tell me how he was doing. I'd cheer, but then go back to work. (I'm really far behind today!)
After a while, he got discouraged with this. Without the other kids, he could get all the time he wanted on the game systems, true, but "there's no one in there to cheer me on." So pitiful! I took a short break to cheer for him but then, joy of joys, his siblings came home, his 2 best friends in all the world.


*The picture is a totally unrelated picture of a sculpture my daughter did, of modeling clay.

A little taste of summertime from my mom's garden last year.

Those are just too pretty to not share. Doesn't that make you feel almost warm?

Deadlines and random photos.

I'm working today, trying to meet the deadline for tomorrow night. My work goes in 2 week periods and tomorrow's the end of these 2 weeks. With all this holiday partying and meeting long lost relatives during this 2-week-period, I got really behind and consequently, have to work a lot this weekend. I hate when I do that, not the partying, the getting behind.

I've recently put my computer screen saver on the picture slide show and we're all really enjoying it. Over Christmas break, I had uploaded about 700 pictures from my digital camera onto my computer and now we're getting to look at them whenever my screen saver is on. A lot of them I don't even remember. There are a lot of good ones on there and it's a good review of our last year and a half or so; maybe 2 years. I wish I was one of those super organized scrapbooking sort of people but I'm not and this is about as good as it gets for us. At least I am good at getting out the camera and taking the pictures even if I rarely get any developed and never get any put in albums or scrapbooked, right? My daughter also uses my camera a lot and takes some really interesting shots. These 3 are hers, I think. I'm really glad we went with digital because it frees you up to take a bunch of shots that may or may not turn out well. If they're bad, we just delete them and don't waste film.

Not much going on today, so back to work.

Since you asked.

On the comments below, Freakmom asked for a clarification of our schedule. It doesn't always go as planned, but I'll share the plan with you.

Monday mornings I print and give out lists. I do these in MS Word using a table and everyone has their own personalized list. Most of us hang them somewhere in the house on the wall and use a marker to mark off what they've done. Each person has a morning section and an afternoon section.

Here's the morning list for Monday for my oldest:
Breakfast
Brush teeth
Pickup in your room.
Exercise 1/2 hour.
Unload dishwasher.
Pickup in living room.

These chores rotate during the weekdays and aren't always the same. If I don't put breakfast on there, they'll go until time to start the afternoon list and then complain they haven't had breakfast. I get up earlier than the kids and do my housecleaning, exercise and some of my transcription, eat my own breakfast and shower. (not in that order!)

At 12:30 we have lunch and start the American history unit study which we all do together. This takes about 45 minutes to an hour. After the unit study, oldest son goes to his room to finish his other classes, which right now are intro to computers, algebra 1, guitar and reading. I've been back and forth all year on what to do with him. I really want to get him an accredited diploma but my husband doesn't, so right now, I'm planning get him a plain homeschool diploma but also to have him take some CLEP exams so that he has some college done before he turns 18. Right now we are preparing for the American History test. I hope to get him to take it this spring. I actually think he'll be better off this way and learn more, but it's hard to let go of that accredidation mindset. It's not necessary legally or to get admitted to college, so I don't know why I struggle with it.

After he goes to his room, the youngest 2 and I do math together. It's easier to keep them on the same level for math. I don't think I could do 2 sessions of math a day. Then youngest goes to play while I do spelling with my daughter. Then she goes off to do reading and handwriting/copywork, while he and I do his reading and phonics together. We finish around 4:00 usually.

From 4 p.m. to about 8 p.m. is our 'running' time; that's when we might go to the grocery, the library, skating or game night, etc. After that, I usually do the rest of my transcription.

I'm not totally thrilled with this schedule but it works okay for us. I will probably be adding more language arts/grammar to the day for my oldest 2. It's sadly lacking right now because we've had so much trouble finding a curriculum, but I'm working on it.

We also have read-alouds the last 1/2 hour before bed. Usually we read something goofy and fun like Hank the Cowdog but every now and then we read something educational.

A different approach.

Today, we did took a slightly different approach to our afternoon school lists. We got started on our WW1 study and it was going well. We're making a large notebooking page out of a manilla folder about the war, what caused it, which countries were in it, a timeline and all kinds of things about the war and it was taking a while today. When I did my sample timeline, I just drew it in there freehand and mine was kind of crooked. But the kids wanted to do theirs neater. They got out rulers and measured the folder, divided the number of inches by 5 for the years of the war and did it very carefully. We discussed the difference in inches and centimeters and discussed how the inches were divided into 16ths on the ruler. Then we looked at a graph of the number of soldiers each country had in the war and the number of casualties. My youngest wanted to draw his own verson of the graph on his page. Then, my daughter wanted to add up all those large numbers. We read all the numbers, practicing getting all those place values right. Tonight, we're going to listen to a book on CD called "The Night Flyers" which is about the use of homing pigeons during the war.

We didn't get to our formal math and spelling today but the unit study was going so well and the kids were so engaged in learning, that I didn't want to interupt them to make them learn something else.