_____?

I can't think of a title so while I'm typing my random thoughts for today, I'll just leave it blank. We've got a lot going on today. We'll be celebrating my Dad's birthday this evening. I've got things to mail to my sister and things to mail to the caseworker, both of which will probably need to be mailed from the post office. I'm going to enroll the younger 2 kids in 4H classes today too. We're still working on gradually remodeling the house and working and homeschooling. We just do a bit here and a bit there, constantly working on everything at once.

One of my latest inspirations is called a "Yes Ma'am" list. We've been keeping up with how nicely the kids do as they are asked and they've been getting points for it. When they get 100, they'll get $5.00. The girl is in the lead. The only problem is, I think it may be because I ask her to do more things. She's usually the most willing worker and I ask her to do a lot. Younger son frequently whines when asked to do something and is the inspiration for making the list. Oldest son stays in his room a lot and consequently, doesn't get asked to do as much. Really, the kids have been doing pretty well lately. You should see them jump up when someone brings groceries home, knowing they have to help bring them in and put them away. I've threatened them that he who does not work does not eat. Of course I wouldn't starve them, but I might make them eat only nutritous foods for a week. (No junk food!?) They've been getting their lists done mostly without whining lately too. It's pretty amazing and probably won't last long! I guess it's my season to be rebellious, not theirs!

Still rebellious.

I'm still feeling rebellious about everything except our unit study. I'm interested in American History and notebooking and so I enjoy that part of our day. The rest of it, I don't want to do. I'm still doing it but I'm really having to push myself. Especially with math. I've never been that much of a fan of math. I've managed to do enough of it to get by but that's it. Now as a homeschooling mom, I find myself having to immerse myself in fractions on a daily basis. I don't enjoy it.

I found out from one of our homeschool leaders that starting between the time my oldest son and my daughter graduate, Kentucky is raising the requirements to graduate to 4 years of math, starting with Algebra 1, so the youngest 2 will have to take calculus and geometry in addition to Algebra 1 and 2. I think it was 2 years of math when I was in school. How much of it do I use on a daily basis? Not much.

I've been tagged!

Thanks for tagging me, you know who you are!

The rules for this meme are:

(1) Link to the person that tagged you.

(2) List the rules on your blog.

(3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.

(4) Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.

(5) Let each random person know they have been tagged.

Here are mine!

1. I have a hard time following routines. (I'll bet my regular readers already knew that.)

2. I love to read.

3. I'm a retired wedding singer.

4. I always wear black.

5. Except for college, I've lived in the same town all my life.

6. My favorite day of the week is Monday.

I'm not gonna do the link thingy, so if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged!

Reading the Carnival of Homeschooling.

It's here this week.

So much for routines ...

We kind of threw ours out the window this afternoon. We started out okay. We all did our morning school lists which consist of chores, personal hygeine and exercise. So you could say we had PE and Health classes this morning. There was a short lecture on how a family is a team and even if you didn't make this particular mess, there are plenty of messes that you make that other people clean up. I guess that's a bit on citizenship/social studies right there. Then we started working on American History. I read one chapter in the text we're using and the kids made a notebook page. We're working on the war year by year and we are at 1941, so it was about mostly Pearl Harbor. We did a mini-biography of the Japanese leader at that time, Tojo. (I can't spell his first name without looking it up.) Sometime during history, I developed a splitting headache. Youngest son has been wanting to play Risk the game of world domination and strategy for weeks, thinking we should do it and count it as school since we're learning about wars. Today, I said okay and they played it with their Dad while I took a headache-relieving wonderful nap. The younger kids also invented 2 games, their own kind of bowling and a nerf shooting gallery game during the breaks from Risk because sometimes it's a long time between your turns. (Yes, I can sleep right on through nerf shooting and water bottle bowling.) Now they are watching Fetch with Ruff Ruffman on PBS and learning about the structure of the human brain.

Let's see, PE, Health, Citizenship, Social Studies, History, Geography, inventing a game, which goes along with our game/baseball mini-unit (I just made that up!) and Anatomy. Got a lot covered today, didn't we?

Back to work and school.

We were just off over the weekend and yesterday, but it seems like a long, long time since we've done school. I've got our lists printed and we are just brimming with enthusiasm to get started.

Not really.

Anyway, the field trip to the baseball museum went okay. I was not all that impressed with it, for the price, if you know what I mean. It was just okay. We can say we've done it now. For a long time it's been on a list of local museums we haven't visited, so now we can say we have. The kids all got the miniature baseball bats, and my youngest has hardly put his down. He's invented a game with the little bat and a little foam nerf ball called "mouse ball" for some reason. He and the girl played it quite a bit last night. It's similar to baseball but there's only 1 base. We learned from the Homeschool Physical Education book how to adapt baseball for fewer players was to remove some of the bases and it does work. That way you don't have players stuck on base with no one to bat them in.

The good news around here is our flooring and other home improvement projects are finally getting done. While we were gone to the museum, Dad got some quality at home time in and got some things done. Yay!

Now back to our usual routine.

Getting up at the crack of dawn.

We've gotten spoiled, as homeschoolers, especially since right before Christmas. We have been pushing our bedtime further and further back and sleeping in. I've quit getting up at 7:00 and now get up around 8:00 or even 9:00. I get the kids up anywhere from 9:30 to 10:30. So getting up on Sunday mornings has become a struggle even though they only need to get up at 8:30. Tomorrow, we have a field trip to the Louisville Slugger museum and we have to meet the homeschool group at 8:45! We'll have to leave at 8:15. The kids are already antipating getting up at the crack of dawn and not with joy. I guess we need to go to bed earlier tonight?

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.