Okay. Maybe I should plan now?

I really need to get busy planning the school year.  Summer reading is over.  VBS is almost over (today).  The city pool will be closing soon. The local public school kids will be heading back to school.  The signs are all aligning to let me know what to do.  Honestly, if I didn't have a big old learning glitch  to deal with, I think I would have already done it.  If I had 2 students like my daughter who can and will basically do whatever I hand her with no problems, I would just order stuff and go with it.  But I have a kid, my youngest, who has something going on with him.  He doesn't write well and he doesn't spell well, even though he reads very well and has an amazing vocabulary.  He does fairly well at math and we've consistently kept him with his sister in math class, so he's been working a year ahead in that, but I really don't know what to do about his spelling and writing.  He's very interested in the roots of words, so I may try something that teaches Greek and Latin root words so that he can maybe improve his spelling.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  To me, it is a complete mystery that he can read so fast and so well and not know how to spell the words when he needs to.  It's a different learning style from mine and I need to learn how to teach to his learning style.  Please give me any suggestions you may have in the the comments section!!!! 

Break time!

We've been watching old seasons of The Amazing Race from Netflix and sometimes they have a mandatory 12 hour rest.  My daughter commented that it is a good thing it is mandatory or no one would do it, they would just keep pushing themselves.  Well yesterday, some of the people in my house kind of hit a wall.  Three days of getting up 2 hours earlier than usual (for the kids) and all the exercise and going, going, going kind of hit us.  A friend emailed to let us know that they weren't going to be at the pool last night and at that point, we were relieved, and not disappointed and I could really tell we needed a break, so I cancelled chores, declared a no-mandatory-exercise day and gave everyone a couple extra hours of screen time.  We were tired so we watched a movie, got in the pool just to float, not swim laps, and generally took the day off. Sometimes you just really need that. 

Busy and thinking.

The kids are doing VBS this week.  I'm working and chauffeuring, trying to keep the house clean, trying to get in 2 hours of exercise every day, selling things on Ebay, trying to keep up with my mom's doctor stuff and starting to think about what we will be doing for school this fall.  We've also got 2 sleepovers, a birthday party, summer reading, family swim night and a field trip this week.  I spoke to the kids I will be homeschooling this year last night about it in the pool and surprisingly they are receptive to the idea of notebooking.  I'm kind of excited about it.  It sounds fun to me.  We'll see.  I may make a plan to try it for the first 8 week period and then re-evaluate ... you know, my favorite thing, tweaking the schedule!  :-P 

Good notebooking/lapbooking resources.

This is kind of cool.  Minibook Gallery.  Here's another one on Squidoo.   Here are a bunch of notebooking pages, The Notebooking Fairy.  Here's one for making your own comic books.  Zakka

Last full week of July.

This is the last full week of vacation for the public schooled kids in this area.  They do a "year round" school schedule with more time off at fall break, spring break and winter break (also known as Christmas break), so they start very early in August.  We do not follow their schedule exactly, preferring to take only 1 week in the fall and 1 week in the spring (maybe) and start later, savoring a couple of extra weeks of summer.  I still haven't written the kid's fall schedule and I have not decided what we're going to be doing.  I usually pull things together at the last minute but since I can change them throughout the year when I need to, it's fine.  The kids are used to my constant tweaking of the schedule and just go with it.  As for the oldest, who won't be homeschooled this year, he's got plans to try and get a job and then start home-college through, probably, Penn Foster.   None of those plans are concrete at this time either.  We're kind of just taking things as they come right now.  It might have something to do with everything breaking and having to be fixed, the kitchen sink (for which we had to call a plumber), my husband's car and now my car ...   We are meeting some goals this year though. I have spring cleaned, exercised for 2 hours pretty much every day in July and finally, finished my book on how to go gluten free (for about the 10th time, but this time, I actually did approve it to be published, so it's finished-finished this time!).  I really do need to take some time, sit down and decide what we are doing this coming year though.  Maybe next week.  

The good news is

we now have a hot tub.  The bad news is, it's our pool.  The water in our pool was 100 degrees yesterday when we got in it to exercise.  I'm getting a little tired of this heat wave.

Zipping around town.

Okay, is using zipping as my title, kind of reaching?  It probably is, but I've had to be kind of creative with this alphabet thingy, so there you are.  We do go a lot.  One time my cousin called me and left a message on my phone answering machine that said "You work at home, you homeschool .. why are you never home?!"  (Since then, I have stopped working at home and I work doing my medical transcription job at my mom's house because she has faster internet service.)  The kids and I go to skate nights twice a month, swim nights once a week in the summer.  In the fall, winter and spring, we add in 4H once a month, youth group meetings, and field trips.   I really can't remember what I did before I had children and I can't imagine what I will do when they all grow up, which is really speeding towards us now that our youngest is a teenager.   The best advice I can give a new homeschool mom is to combine trips as much as possible and have as much fun with your kids as you possibly can!

Young?

The argument has been made and I tend to agree that our current school systems are pushing academics too early, when the kids are too young and thereby stressing out the children and frequently leaving little boys behind.  Here's a good article about it.  I think that it is normal for some kids not to read until later than 6.  My youngest did not read well until age 10.  We didn't push him and now he loves to read.  I think being pushed to read too soon can just kill the love of reading for some kids.  I also think that kids need more recess and more free play than some of them are getting.  Play is a child's work.  It's how they figure out the world.  I know there are times that I need to process things and kids process things through play.