Carnival of Homeschooling is up.

Here's the link. Carnival.

Male readers may skip this post.

I've been procrastinating about a lot of things lately, I think there's about a week a month when I just can't do much of anything. It's like I pedal the other 3 weeks of the month, but that week, I have to coast. Yes it's that week. It bites, seriously. Lately my little visitor has been showing up with headaches for 3-4 days, abdominal pain and just a tiny, tiny bit of IRRITABILITY. Now that I'm starting to feel better, I might actually get some things done that I've needed to do, make a few calls, decide what to do about the rest of school and generally get on with my life for the next 3 weeks.

Add to that the fact that I'm trying to get through the last book of Twilight, which I wasn't planning to be reading this week and didn't schedule for ... when the last few Harry Potter books came out, I planned for them, made sure I didn't have any plans, etc.,, but I've been trying to read this off and on, while working and doing everything else and for some reason, the kids have been unbelievably talkative this week (even my 16-year-old, which is unusual!) and this has kind of aggravated the IRRITABILITY. Just a bit. It's been such a fun week. I guess it's good that several things I had scheduled got cancelled, although since they were primarily fun things for the kids, they don't see it that way. 

Anyway, hopefully I'll feel better today, so far no headache, and I'll get some things done.

Motivational issues.

I got a call from the library yesterday and the fourth Twilight book was available for me at the library. I've warmed to the series since the first one and I've enjoyed the other books, so of course I had to go get it and now I don't want to do school, I just want to read, read, read.

Early start.

I had an early start (for me) this morning and I've already got almost half my list done. I had a busy week planned and then yesterday, within a few hours, 3 things were canceled, so maybe I'll have kind of an easy week? Like I said yesterday, we've got to get in gear for the rest of the year and get it done. I'm going to take a look at the kid's lists this morning and see how I can tweak them to get the most done with the least whining.

Gotta get in gear.

I have got to get in gear for the rest of the year, getting this curriculum finished. I want to be able to do new things next year, not have the same ones waiting on us to finish them. What fun would that be? A lot of people in the homeschool e-loops I'm part of are starting to sell things that they are done with this year and some of them are offering some really good bargains. Yesterday, I picked up a general science textbook that I hear is excellent for $15.00. New it's around $50.00

So anyway, we need to get re-organized and re-energized and get going on it, for a nice finish. Then I'm going to plan to do some type of unit for the summer, maybe that Asia one. It won't hurt them to get some summer education in!

For the birthday poll, I'm going with my voter's choice and getting some small things I've been wanting, books, gardening things and things for the house, kind of the thing I want most from each of the other choices in the poll. We may also plan a day at Rough River instead of a night, to save the expense, so it would be a mini-mini-mini-vacation. :-) All that would cost would be gas money and while we were down there, we should really eat at the lodge restaurant ...

Birthday.

Although there have now been more votes on my poll, the same answer is in the lead - "lots of little things I've been wanting." However, if I let my kids vote it would tip suddenly and completely to the i vacation" answer. I know what they want, but they're probably not going to get it, although I would like to go spend maybe a day at Rough River ...

Anyway, since this birthday has felt a tiny bit un-birthday-y (although I did get cards and cake and fudge and money and a necklace from my daughter, so I'm not sure why I feel that way, I think it's because I really didn't stop and celebrate, just kind of celebrated on the go, which is how I've been doing everything lately....) I've decided not to count this one. We'll just hang onto that old number for another year.

Or two.

The poll.

Today's the last day for my poll to see what I buy for my birthday.  The votes seem to be pretty evenly split right now, with lots of little things I've been wanting and spring cleaning done by someone else in the lead with 2 votes each.  I bought myself a cake last night for half price in the bakery clearance area of Wal-mart.  It was ugly, but very tasty.   No sense in blowing a lot of my budget on a prettier one, since it is already half gone and not expected to last through the rest of the day!

Still.

My mom-in-law is still in the hospital.  We're all praying she gets better soon.  My husband has been spending a lot of time up there.  I've been wavering in what to do.  I'm not sure if I go up there it will help any, but I want to go.  I was going to take off work and drive up there last night, but at the last minute, my husband had to take my van, so I didn't have transport.  Today I do, so maybe I can get up to see her today. 

I'm also supposed to go to "mom's night out" with the homeschool group.  I don't know if I will or not, but I have a lot of trouble getting out of these things ... they'll offer to share babysitters, come and get me, whatever it takes to get me there.  I'm not sure if they like me that much or just want 100% participation, but whatever, sometimes it's just easier to go along with the crowd and go.  Several times when I've said I'm not going to something, they've postponed it or cancelled it entirely.  It makes me feel guilty.  Anyway, I love the group, all of them and so most of the time I go to whatever they plan.

I thought I'd share a little funny from my youngest.  He's picked up a phrase, I think he got it from my husband.  It's "fairly certain".  So yesterday, he's reading the Magic Schoolbus book on the solar system and he says "I'm fairly certain that Arnold's cousin is lying about her school."  It just sounds so funny coming out of a 10-year-old, I don't know why.  :-)

Wednesday.

Again, I'm so creative with my post titles, but hey, I've got a lot on my mind.  We've got a family member in the hospital, this time my husband's mom.  I am holding down the fort at home while he goes up there this morning.  Hopefully, the medications they are giving her will be effective and she'll be home soon and able to enjoy her new retirement, since she just retired last week!

I don't know if we will do school or not.  I guess we will, although we'll probably go up to the hospital at some point too.

I really need to come up with a plan for finishing this school year in a good way!

Today, I'm not doing anything.

Okay, I have to work tonight, but I refuse to work hard and before I have to work, I am going to explore new frontiers of laziness, lying around and reading, going to play Upwords at Mom and Dad's and generally not getting anything accomplished.

Okay, last night got a little silly.

My 10-year-old and I finished writing our parody of Lambchop's This is the Song that Never Ends. Here are our words:

This is the day that never ends.
If you start our work at 10
and you keep typing till 11:24,
when you get done you'll find
your arms are very sore ...

this is the day that never ends
(repeat forever).

(I actually did type from 10:00 am until 11:24 p.m. with a nap/supper break from 5-7. I thought it was funny that 11:24 rhymed so well in the song.)

This is the day that never ends, it just goes on and on my friends,

Okay, I'm parodying the little Lambchop song from TV, but it popped in my head with those lyrics about an hour ago and it's been driving me crazy.  I'm so completely and totally exhausted from typing for 10 hours at 2 different jobs that I'm not making a lot of sense anymore.  One thing that keeps running through my head (besides the silly song) is that I don't know if I can do 2 more weekends of this.  It kills me.  I hurt all over.  I've gotten to the point that I can hardly type at all now and words like underlying, come out as "underling" and finding a few minutes ago was just "ding" - both dangerous typos as spellcheck won't pick them up, so I've been having to go over every report carefully, to avoid these kinds of mistakes.  A while ago I typed a report that was 10 minutes long, 106, 65 character lines and while I was spell checking it locked up my computer and then when I rebooted it, the report had completely disappeared, so I had to type the whole thing again.  Very, very frustrating.  Very, very, very, very long day.

Working the weekend.

Only 2 weekends to go after this one.  However, the boss at the hospital job is still conspiring to keep me there.  She asked one of my weekend co-workers to approach me yesterday about what I'd need to have to stay.  I think I might make up a very nice list of things I'd like and just see what happens.  I really don't know why she doesn't just hire a service.

Anywho, I worked both jobs yesterday and I'll be working both jobs today.  I think I'm going to need some chocolate, just to keep my strength up.

Today and Yesterday.

Today, I've got to work at the hospital all day. I'm dreading it, but I'll live. I guess.

Yesterday, I got up in a really crabby mood and didn't want to do my list, so I didn't, giving the kids a day off, officially. About noon, after coffee and breakfast and some reading time had taken the edge off of my crabbiness, I suggested that we take a field trip so that we could still count the day as a school day. Our art teacher had suggested that we walk along main street and look at the buildings architectural details, which are art. We did that, and fortunately, there are several art galleries in our little town so we checked out a couple of those too. After we got home, the kids were inspired and did several drawings each. The strewing of library books I did earlier this week is still giving educational benefit, as they were using a book about how to draw dragons.

Also, one of the books had a cute picture of a sloth in it. My youngest son was very taken with it and drew a picture of a sloth and then started investigating sloths, getting out the animal atlas and another book on animals, having me look up sloths on the internet and reading a ton of stuff about them.

I'll be strewing a bunch of books around next week too. I 'd forgotten to do it lately, but it really works well around here, especially now that all 3 kids are reading well. My youngest son's reading has really blossomed in the past year, going from reading Suess to novels and now series of novels. This week he checked out a bunch of library books about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals like saber toothed cats and read them all himself, unlike the last time he checked them out, when I had to read them all to him (about a year ago)!

Couple of interesting articles I've read lately.

This one is specifically about homeschooling and explains the "why?" part of it very well.   Homeschooling.

This one is about how kids teach themselves.  It's facinating.
Minimally Invasive Education

Maxing out our library cards.

I've been strewing art and space books around the house for the kids to read, really just bringing them home from the library and putting them on the couch.  They've been doing a lot of looking at the art books especially and doing some of the drawing exercises in them.  We probably have at least 50 library books in the house at the current time. Each of our 5 cards can have 25 books on them.  My card, as the one everyone uses when they can't find their own, is on my keychain for easy access and I currently have 26 books checked out.  I'm not sure how that happened, that I'm one book over, but oh well.  We'll probably be back in there in the next couple of days for more books.  Right now, I'm reading "Fat Families, Thin Families" and I have a book on traveling in the southeast and one on using the internet to promote a business for free.  I've also got the second Pendragon book to read and the third of the "Things Not Seen" trilogy to read. 

When you wish ...

My youngest apparently made a wish when he was outside during his exercise hour. He was telling us about it and he said "I wished on a, um, thingy". My daughter and I, when we stopped laughing, decided to sing a chorus of "When you wish upon a thingy... " Turns out it was a dandelion. We didn't ask what the wish was, of course.

Trying to get back into the school groove.

Today's the first day back after several days of not doing our school lists.  I am rebelling against having to do all of that work on my list and dragging around this morning.  I'm going to use my one "freebie" today and not do one of the things.  I can't decide on cleaning or exercise.  I'd really like to be able to skip both of them this morning.  The house is pretty clean today so that seems a logical choice, but I really don't want to go outside and walk, either.  Hmmm.

 I made some minor changes to the kid's lists for now, but haven't decided if I'm going to do a big change and focus on each curriculum book one week until we've finished them, we've got Learning Language Arts through Art, Learning to Write the Novel Way, the science curriculum and the Christian Cottage unit study on Asia.  I'm seriously considering doing the asia study this summer and going ahead and working on the other 3 quite a bit now.  Can't decide.  I guess maybe I can ponder that while I'm outside walking.  Fun.

 

Spring break, spring cleaning, and thinking about summer.

Cleaning.  That's what we got done today.  If the kids are lucky, they'll get to do school instead of cleaning tomorrow.  :-)   We also made a trifle.  My mom asked for a low cholesterol cake for her birthday last week so I looked up online and discovered trifles, although I think the proper British ones have alcohol, ours involved layering of pound cake, whipped cream, vanilla pudding and strawberries.  Today's trifle involved banana pudding, bananas, whipped cream and nilla wafers.  It should be good.  It's chilling in the fridge now, waiting for us. 

Educational things we've done the last few days, are going to the library and getting books on art to go with our 4H art lessons, doing some more drawings and looking through our new telescope.  (Did I mention we got a free telescope from another homeschooling family?)  Anyway, the last few days haven't been education-less, though we haven't been doing school in the traditional manner.  I've got a couple of appointments tomorrow, so it will probably be Wednesday before we get back into the routine.  Oh well, we're still on target to get done the second week of June.

As usual this time of year, I'm thinking about year-round school.  I think some summer learning would be a good idea.  We may do some unit studies this summer.

Happy Easter!

I've decided.

Since I have an MP3 player now, I've decided my second choice for my birthday present is this. 

https://www.mollymaid.com/MainGiftCert.aspx

:0)

This large hint is for those people who read my blog who would have to buy me a present anyway, like my husband.  All others can disregard this announcement.

The Phone.

Our phone rings too frequently for my tastes.  My son and I, trying to get it before it wakes my husband up (which it almost always does), always get it wrong.  If it's for me, he answers it.  If it's for him, I answer it. 

I hate phones.

For the record ...

I'd just like to say that if any publishers of homeschool materials would like to send me free things for review, I'd be happy to review them here on my blog. Also children's books, toys, video games ... I've noticed other bloggers getting to do reviews and I would love to do it too. Just thought I'd put that out there.

Missed it by that much!

I missed getting my list done by 1 minute today and my youngest son would not give me any leeway, so there's no school for the kids today. Guess what I'm going to say next time he wants an extension?

In fairness to him, I promised that if I didn't get my work done on time that they didn't have to do school AND I appointed him to check on me. He's just tough on me the way I SHOULD be tough on him when he doesn't finish school, but it seems like I'm always giving him extra time or not making him do something ...

Thursday.

I don't have to work today, which is always a good thing, but I do have to clean, and that's one of my least favorite things, so it balances out.  The kids will be doing school basically on their own, which is how I set it up when I was working all the time and still haven't changed it.  I am thinking about a big change though, because I really want to finish the curriculums (curricula?) that I bought this year.  We've got about 40 days of school left, about 8 weeks, and I really want to get those done, so I may take some of their chores off or just pile it all on.  It's hard to balance or figure out, how much work to give them, because I don't want them to be overwhelmed, but I also don't want them doing too little.  Balance.  I should have named this blog that, because it seems like I'm always trying to balance, work, school, housework ...

The Weather.

Monday it rained.

Tuesday it snowed.

Wednesday (today) it is a beautiful spring day with not a cloud in the sky.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring?  

Could be anything.

Busy day.

Today, we had our 4H art class.  They are working in clay again this week, but a slightly different kind of clay.  They seemed to enjoy the class.  Hopefully, they learned some things.  I kind of sat in the back and thought my own thoughts today, talked with some of the other moms some and didn't really pay attention.  (Sorry!  I know that's not a good example!)   After class, we went to lunch with the homeschool group.  Then we came home and I worked at my job for 4 hours, took a very quick little nap and then went to a meeting of the homeschool group in a different town.  Since there aren't any teens in our group, I'm trying to get my teen involved in this group so he'll have more kids his own age to hang out with.  That meeting lasted 2 hours with an hour drive there and back and after I got home, I did a little bit more work at my job and now I'm off to bed. 

Another good book.

Yesterday, I finished reading If You Could See Me Now by Cecelia Ahern, the author of P.s. I love you.  I saw the movie P.S. I love you and wasn't all that thrilled with it.  It was very sad, but this is a pretty happy book, though moving in places, and I enjoyed it very much.

What we're _____ today.

What we're doing today:
The plan is to do school today.  I've finished my list, going outside to walk for half an hour even though it's rainy and cold, proving it can be done. (to my kids, who think they can't go outside in the rain!) My MP3 player was charged up today thankfully and I got to listen to some of my "Skinny Songs".  Hopefully, they will do magic.  :-)  I don't, at this moment, have any doctor's appointments today although one could come up at any time.  My leg problem seems to be better so I'm not going to go in and have that seen about unless it gets worse again. 

What we're reading today:
I'm reading Have a New Kid By Friday by Dr.Kevin Leman.  It basically says that I should have a backbone and parent my kids, which most of the time I do, but sometimes I do tend to be a bit too permissive and let them get away with too much.  I'm on hold for the rest of the Twilight series and the rest of the Pendragon series because they are not available at the library right now.  I'll read them when I can.  My oldest son is still re-reading the Animorphs series.  My daughter is re-reading the Warriors series and my youngest is still reading the Deltora Quest series.  We are keeping the library quiite busy.  At night we are listening to Peter and the Starcatchers although last night there was a malfunction on the download and we ended up doing Mad Libs as a substitute, which turned out to be hilarious but that might have been because we were so tired.  We might read them again in the light of day and not find them so funny, who knows.  We used this site because we couldn't find our book - Crazy Libs.

What we're thinking about today.
I can't really speak for anyone else, so I'll have to type what I'm thinking about.  I am ready for spring to actually get here and it not be so cold.  I want to put a garden out, but I want a raised bed and the one that I had last year rotted and got overgrown with morning glories which were beautiful, but choked out my tomatos, so I ripped the whole thing out and now I'm wondering whether to put it back in the same spot or not.  I'm thinking that I'm really out of shape and I really need to exercise a ton because we are going to Kentucky Down Under later this month and it is on a hill and we will have to walk up and down it about 50 times and I don't want to have a heart attack there.  (Or anywhere, for that matter. )  I'm also thinking about school and how to finish up the year this year, how to get all the curriculum done, whether I should give the kids more responsibilities (probably) and whether we will take a summer break this year, just go to a chores list or just keep doing school all summer ...  I bet you didn't think my brain could have all those thoughts, did ya?  The fact is, my brain is constantly going in about 20 different directions and that's why I tend to seem spacy at times.  Really.  That's totally what it is. 

Our April Fool's Day Visitor.

An owl, hanging on our boy's bedroom window screen.   When they told me, I thought they were April fooling me.  Fortunately, they had pictures.  (I wasn't home at the time of the visit.)

Art day projects.

A different kind of day.

The kids have been doing their homeschool lists, the ones that they can do without me here, for weeks.  We haven't gotten any of the enrichment activities done, so today we are going to do as many of them as we can.  We're going to do a lot of art today.  I am looking forward to it!

Added some links.

I added some links to my Homeschool Links blog.

Better today.

I got home from Dad's appointment today by noon, school is going pretty well and I think I might have time to go to the library before work. I'm waiting for the kids to finish school before we go. It will be nice to see the place again!