A fun glimpse into the future.

If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, you know I am always fighting the screen time limits battle and the exercise battle.  Well, some of what I've been saying must have been sinking in.   Earlier today I was talking to my youngest and he was telling me about something he learned from a TV show.  I asked him when he grows up and has kids, if he'll let them have unlimited screen time.  He said "Of course not, they need exercise too."  Then after a few seconds he said,  "I'll let them watch educational TV, like PBS.  Not the Disney channel.  I don't learn much from the Disney channel."

A better afternoon.

So I finished a very frustrating day of typing physical therapy reports and then went to my youngest son's physical therapy handwriting appointment.   He did very well today.  The therapist came out and made this statement to me "He is a little scientist.  You have done a great job homeschooling him!.  If I had kids, I'd go straight home and pull them out of school and homeschool them because I can see that homeschooling really works".


It just doesn't get any better for a homeschool mom than that.  :-)

Blah.

I'm having one of those days when I'm feeling completely overwhelmed with all I have to do.  I am not sure why I'm having such an intense Yikes! attack this morning, but it just hit me.  I have home improvement projects, cleaning, pet care, kid physicals, physical therapy, decluttering, cleaning, exercising, cooking, homeschooling, work .... it just goes on and on.   I felt burdened with it all when I got here at work today and now I'm having to type reports that are very difficult and my mind is wandering to all the other things I need to do. 

Just do the next thing, right?

Okay Day.

Today was okay for a Monday.  We took the van back for the billionth time in the hopes that they can find the leak in the air conditioning system and then I went and paid my darn traffic ticket.  I think since we're having this horrible recession, they ought to lower the price of those things.  The fine was only 20 dollars, but the court costs, 143.00.   Yuck.  Then I went to work and it went reasonably well. I wish it could go that well all the time.  While I was at work, the kids and their Dad did school.  It's math day and from what I hear, it went okay.  After work, I took my oldest son to his friend's house and the rest of us went to Hobby Lobby. What a wonderful place!  My daughter spent some more of her birthday money there.  It's way more fun for me to go with her to spend her birthday money than it is with the boys because they basically go to Gamestop and she wants to go places like Michael's Crafts and Hobby Lobby.  Right now she's buying things for the hammock chair.  She also is making a Nintendo DS carrier for my youngest son with pockets for the games but she's not spending money on it, she's sewing it out of an old piece of denim that she had left over from last week when she cut off a pair of jeans to make bermuda shorts.  Somehow, this has got to count for home ec.  :-P  

School, week 3 and other things.

Fair week is always kind of different around here, since we put in a lot of time enjoying ourselves at the fair.  Going to the fair one day is an excused absence in the Kentucky schools both public and private and the other day is a FIELD TRIP!!!.  Fun. We saw a lot of kids there on Wednesday with their school classes.  That would terrify me as a teacher, trying to keep up with 20 or more kids in that crowd!  Sometimes I'm afraid I'll lose one of my 3. 

Anyway, we're still in the process of trying to get back to 'normal' whatever that is.  Today we did a pretty decent job of getting school done in and around the other things we needed to do.  The kids did most things while I was working, then I came home, checked in with them and then went back out to do the grocery shopping and other errands.  We just finished up with a cooking class at about 5:30 p.m.  They made the turkey dinner from this site.  It's yummy.  Here, we serve it over mashed potatoes instead of pasta so I won't have to make 2 different kinds of pasta and we use chicken instead of turkey because my daughter imagines that she doesn't like turkey. 

That's the same web site where I got the beef and broccoli recipe that we loved so much last week.  The woman who writes it has a book called Make It Fast, Cook It Slow: The Big Book of Everyday Slow Cooking and I'm thinking of giving that book as a wedding gift for future weddings, since the recipes of hers that I've tried have been very good.  I might have to try a few more myself though ... she has one called "Slow Cooker Peanut Butter Cup".  Hmmm.   That one might have to be next Friday's cooking lesson. 

In other news youngest son's therapy session for his handwriting went really well yesterday. His therapist, Ms. Joyce, can get him to do so much more than I can without him complaining, it's crazy.  She rewards him with getting to throw a ball at a trampoline and catch it, which he loves to do, so it's a win-win.  He has written more this week than he ever has in his life and he's doing a good job too. 

We've been doing a nutrition unit that I got from CurrClick (Nutrition and Health by Cecelia Darby) and the kids have had to keep a food diary this past week.  It's funny, when I asked them what they wanted from the grocery store, they listed a ton of fruits and vegetables!  :-P  I was hoping that the food diary would make them more aware and it did.  I don't know how long it will last, but I'm hopeful.

Somewhat.

We got somewhat back to normal yesterday.  We did some of our schedule without too much enthusiasm.  We were all tired from the fair, plus as I was taking the garbage down, something a muscle in my back went into a spasm of some kind and I was in pain all day.  This did not help with getting things done but I struggled through dishes, laundry and the like.  I also took youngest son to physical therapy but after that, it was painkillers and my chair for me for a while.  It still hurts but is not in an intense spasm at the current time.  That's good because today I've got to work and go to the grocery along with doing school.  In another example of the way our luck is going this year, I had a flat tire this morning.  Did I mention the car battery going dead at Walmart on Sunday and the traffic ticket last week? 

Can you tell I'm feeling just a tiny bit crabby today?   I didn't have any coffee this morning because we are out.  But, this is what the sky looks like today and I can turn this around and make it a good day if I improve my attitude, so I am going to try and do that. 

Anyone with me? 

Back to normal?

We've got to try and get back to our normal today.  We're tired and we don't want to, but we really do need to.  Youngest son has his 3rd occupational therapy appointment this afternoon and he needs to get a bunch of work done before then.   She's really going to make him work.  She wants him to do an hour to an hour and a half of writing per day.  I'm not sure how well this is going to go over but I think that since it's the therapist that's making him do it and not me, it will go better.  I should go now and check his progress ...

The fair is over.

We look forward to it every year, but we've had our fill now after several hours Monday and several hours today.  Today, we saw the lumber Jills show, rode rides in the midway, saw a glass bead demonstration, a bunch of Kentucky booths, the honeybees, the 4H area, rode the shuttle and too many other things to count.  We had a good time.   The kids won 2 red ribbons, 1 blue and 1 white.  My daughter was disappointed that her cat drawing only won a white ribbon, but she decided that was okay after a while, because the white ones are pretty and as many ribbons as she has, she doesn't yet have a white one.  Good way to look at it I guess.

Fair!

We went to the fair yesterday.  My oldest son didn't know how his ankle would do with all the walking around so we only planned to be there for 4 hours before the concert.  His ankle did fine with the help of a little bit of Motrin and we discovered that 4 hours is not nearly enough to see all we need to see at the fair.  We watched a magic show, a juggling show, saw the house they build inside the fairgrounds every year, the raptors, pigs,  horses, toys, hot tubs, the health screening part and  the city bus and it was very quickly time to sprint across the fairgrounds to our van, grab a 5 minute dinner in the van and rush to the concert.  We got home at approximately midnight.  Fortunately, we get to go back Wednesday because we didn't even have time to see our own 4H entries!

State Fair!

We get to go to the state fair today.  Going to the state fair is an excused absence for Kentucky public schools.   We actually did a couple of school related things yesterday; we watched an educational DVD and worked on our nutrition unit and did a couple of other things and may count that as a partial school day.  The hardest part about today is waiting until time to go.  We're not good at waiting.

I keep hearing "what time is it now?"

Sunday.

Life goes on around here.  I'm feeling better than I did on Friday, thank goodness.  Tomorrow is our first state fair day and I'm looking forward to that so that helps my mood somewhat.  I think I'll share some past state fair pictures.

Ups and downs.

This has been a week of ups and downs.  Good things that have happened include school going pretty well and work going okay.  My brother gave me a big old box of gluten free bread, pizza crusts and bagels.  I got to have a grilled cheese sandwich and a BLT (a treat for someone who is gluten free).  Other good things, let's see ... one of our pumpkins got ripe.  Okay, I realize I'm kind of stretching it with the pumpkin ... but it is in my nature to try and focus on the good and for some reason I've enjoyed that crazy pumpkin vine this summer.  The pumpkin in the tree got big and fell out some time this week.  I wrote a guest post for another blog about going gluten free and got a lot of positive feedback from that.  I also lost 3 more pounds.

On the bad side of things, I don't really want to go into any details, but in some ways, this has been a very tough week.  I'm not feeling physically all that great this week and I'm coping with some things I don't want to have to cope with.   I'd appreciate your prayers and warm thoughts.

Block schedule, the good and the bad.

I still think it's working pretty well.  It's only week two so there may be issues that come up later.  We're at Thursday, the math is done for the week, spelling, grammar, nutrition, guitar, biology, writing, assigned reading, all done.  Tomorrow is the easiet day.  I think there's some kind of good psychological impact to getting all that hard stuff overwith early in the week.  Another good thing, my daughter played her first song on the guitar this morning, a 2 chord song, and she played it well enough that I could sing along.  That was cool.   One bad thing is that we're not sure how to do our freebies.  It used to be that you could 'freebie" or skip one thing each week that you didn't want to do as long as it wasn't math; but now if you skip spelling one day, you skip a whole week's spelling.  We may have to only use freebies for one of the daily things?  I don't know.  I've taken that under advisement for now.

Dysgraphia.

As I've mentioned before, my youngest son has some issues with handwriting. I'm not sure if it is truly dysgraphia.  I looked it up and here's the definition.

"People with dysgraphia usually can write on some level, and often lack other fine motor skills and may be cross dominant, finding tasks such as tying shoes difficult. It often does not affect all fine motor skills. They can also lack basic grammar and spelling skills (for example, having difficulties with the letters p, q, b, and d), and often will write the wrong word when trying to formulate thoughts (on paper)"

Okay.  Yes.  This is it in a nutshell.  He has all of this.  He was evaluated by an occupational therapist today and she said that even though he's right handed, he kind of presents as a lefty.  So there's the cross dominant part.  He finds tying shoes difficult.  He's good with grammar, does okay with Sequential Spelling which is for dyslexics and reverses some letters.

I've been trying to get some help with this for a while.  Last summer before school started, I called a bunch of physical therapists and asked them about this but no one seemed to know what I was talking about. Finally, when my older son was in physical therapy I asked the staff there if they could do something.  They said that they could.  I took a sample of his handwriting to his pediatrician and she agreed with me and said that he should see an occupational therapist.   I didn't want to do both physical therapy for my oldest and occupational therapy for my youngest at the same time, so I waited a while and finally took him today.

It's hard when you are a homeschooler and have a child who is having a difficulty like this because everyone looks at you like you should sent him immediately to public school.    I'm not sure that he would have done well in school.  I think that this difficulty would have embarrassed him and would have been hard on his self image.  We try to minimize it around here. There's so much else that he does well and nobody's good at everything, right?  I do want him to have basic legible writing but to get to that point, we've got a lot of work to do. 

Update.

Okay, I spoke too soon.  When I posted yesterday, oldest son had 1 of 8 math lessons done and after I blogged about it, we talked about the adventure list and decided that one of yesterday's adventures was going to be to get pizza.  The youngest 2 and I headed off to an art gallery and then got the pizza and brought it home while he stayed home and concentrated.  He got 6 of 8 lessons done.  I had told him last week that since he was doing algebra 2 and geometry both this year, that he could have until Wednesday to get it done, so I was pleased with his progress after all.  He was motivated by the pizza.  Hey, whatever works.  We have a Little Caesars in town now so we got a Hot and Ready 5 dollar pizza.  Apparently, it was very good.

We did 3 adventures yesterday for no particular reason.  Since it was so hot, we sorted them into a hot and a cool jar and did some things that would not take us out into the heat.  (Yes, we realize that we are wimps!)  First we did bubble art which involves putting food coloring into the bubble solution and catching the bubbles on paper and letting them pop.  It looks really cool.  I'll take a picture of it whenever I get batteries in my camera again.  (It's always something.)  So then we did the art gallery and got pizza and then came home and got in the pool. (PE!)   At the art gallery my daughter was inspired by a hanging hammock chair so now she may be learning macrame to try and make her own.  She didn't have enough birthday money left to buy it outright, but what's the challenge in that anyway?  Really, I think the fact that we don't have a lot of spare money has really fueled her creativity.  How's that for a way to think positively?

This is just a picture of the sunset.  If I have my camera with me, I love to take sky pictures for some reason.

Okay,well, hmm.

Day one of week two is not going as well.  Oldest son is doing extensive whining about his math lessons.  I may need to re-arrange his schedule somehow. I'm not sure.  Since I don't assign the math, I'm not sure how to deal with the afternoon complaints after my husband, the math instructor, has gone to sleep for the day.   The younger two kids are doing okay with their math.   We're supposed to have one of our summer adventures off of the list if they ever get done with the math.   It's supposed to be a reward for getting through the math.  I'm starting to wonder though, if it will be midnight before we get to do it.  I did give him until Wednesday to get it done, but I want him to get a reasonable amount done today.

Sigh.

Reflecting.

I'm thrilled with how the first week of school went.  The block schedule worked well.  There was very little whining.  This is largely because we are using Life of Fred for math.  My youngest whined about his chores, but not really very much.  I guess he feels like he needs to whine a little or I'll wonder if an alien has replaced my child.  Anyway, I'm looking forward to week two.  I enjoy the structure.  The air conditioning went out in our van again this week and the calendar is looking kind of blank for the next four days or so, so we may stay close to home and try and get a lot of things done.  Whoops.  Every time I say that, things get crazy busy and I'm hardly home at all, so let's pretend I didn't mention it.  I should probably spend a lot of time walking to get in better shape for the state fair next week,  when I'll spend 2 days completely on my feet. This will be my first time at the state fair as a gluten free person so I wonder my energy level will be like?  Overall, I have so much more energy and so much less fatigue.  I will miss getting to eat the chocolate dipped cheesecake, but I'll live. I'd rather feel good than bad, thanks. 

End of week one.

I think it's been a pretty good first week, other than the speeding ticket I got yesterday ...at least school's been good.  The kids are finishing up Mavis Beacon teaches typing now and then we'll watch a DVD I checked out of the library and that will be it for the week.  I have some pictures to share, in no particular order.  One is a note I wrote to myself at the homeschool meeting.  It's about a homeschool back-to-school party and I wrote myself a note to 'bring chip'.  I guess I'm only going to bring one?  No one can eat just one. :-)   Another picture is Freckles in her new doggie bed my daughter made especially for her and now my daughter can have her bean bag chair back.  Another picture is the morning glories growing up my porch post.  I enjoy them very much. The fourth picture, if it loads, is a pumpkin that's growing in a tree in our backyard.  That pumpkin vine has gone completely crazy. 

That's it.  We're going shoe shopping now in the hopes that good supportive shoes will help my oldest with his foot/ankle pain.

The fourth day of the first week of school.

I'm still loving the block schedule.  It seems to work really well and with math and language arts the first 2 days, as my friend said "even if the whole rest of the week goes bad, the basics are still covered."  So true.  It's freeing to think that the math, grammar and language arts are already covered for the week.  Today, we did

music, assigned reading (which is health related), home ec (cleaning) and the daily exercise.  We skipped woodworking because it stormed this afternoon and I had to leave to go to a doctor's appointment (just a checkup).  Tomorrow, we've got typing, 4H project work and several DVDs to watch.  It kind of feels like cheating, like we're not working hard enough and honestly, with it being the first week and having several interuptions already, we have not hit every subject as hard as we could have.  I'm hoping we'll build up some momentum.  I also have some things I'll be adding in, social studies for the eldest, which I already own, and just forgot about and we'll also be doing a nutrition unit.  He's still teaching himself computer programming and animation and my daughter's doing an extensive self-taught sewing class and jewelry making class.  The youngest seems to be preparing to become a philosopher and has been giving me some very wise advice lately, which I should follow, but haven't.

I think the block schedule is a keeper.

Day 3.

I've got to say, I'm cautiously optimistic about the new block schedule that we are doing.  It seems to be going pretty well.  We did grammar and biology and I will say that we did get several days of grammar work done between my working and taking the state fair entries to the 4H office to drop off, but I also must confess that we did not get a week's worth of biology done.  We did about half an hour, reviewing some of the things we studied last year.  If you've been reading this blog, you know that last school  year, after my father passed away in January, a lot of our subjects got put on hold and biology was one of them, so we're doing it now.  By my calculations I think we should do at least a couple of hours of biology reading and notebooking every week but since this is the first week and since we have not quite gotten back into the rhythm of it, we're going to excuse ourselves today.  No biggie.  We'll get to it. 

We had our meeting with the homeschool group last night to plan the next 12 weeks or so, until Christmas.  It feels funny to plan Christmas parties when the heat index is 105, but we did it.  We planned a field trip each month, a dinner together each month, 4H meetings, a back to school party, a harvest party and some other things.  I love my homeschool group.  We've got a couple of new families this year and I'm really enjoying getting to meet the new people too.  That's the small group we're in.  We're also in a huge not-quite-as-local group about an hour drive away and I'm debating whether to continue to be a high school activiities leader in that group.  I kind of feel like they need someone who can host events at their home and with me living out of the city, it's really not practical for me to do it.  Still debating that one, because I really don't mind planning activiites.

All in all, it's been a good first week.

Our first interuption.

It is day two of our school year and we've got our first doctor's appointment.  Oldest son needs to go to see the ankle specialist to make sure that it's okay.  He's still having signfiicant pain, he says.  I hope it heals soon.  We have a lot of things we want to do that involve walking.   Today is language arts/writing day in our block schedule and since I'm going to be driving an hour each way to the doctor, we'll probably have to skip that part. Flexibility, right?  The kids will do what they can without me.  We may only be able to count half a day, but oh well.  That's life. 

We have a homeschool planning meeting tonight with our group to try and plan some things for this fall, including 4H classes and maybe a co-op?  We're thinking of doing Spanish classes, which will be great and we may already have a teacher.   That's good because I can't teach Spanish.  I studied just enough French in college to make me a dangerous Spanish teacher.  I'd also like to have a sign language class and we might be able to work that out, I don't know.  I met someone at the library who can teach it and said she'd consider it, but I don't know what I did with her phone number. 

Anyway, we'll just play it by ear today, see how it goes and how much of a school day we can count. 

Is this my house?

I came home from work to find that all of the Life of Fred math was done and at least the younger 2 kids wanted to do more.  They love it.   Here are some of the comments "It's fun and it's funny."  "I want to do another chapter."  "Can we do Life of Fred for the rest of school, every grade?".   Older son is also doing a Life of Fred book on geometry and Teaching Textbooks Algebra 2 which he doesn't seem to hate but it didn't get the rave reviews that Life of Fred did with the other 2 kids.   He said that it was easier working on his own with it than what he used last year and that he shouldn't have to ask Dad any questions because it was all explained in the book.  So anyway, the math part of the block schedule week seemed to go well.  I kind of felt like I'd went away and come home to the wrong house. :-)  The picture below is "Fred".

 

Advantages of homeschooling that I've noticed this week.

1. We didn't have to brave the school supplies aisle at Walmart
2. We didn't have to buy school uniforms.
3. We don't have to spend hours away from each other.
4. We don't have to worry about bus wrecks. (I was in one as a kid and then our      oldest son  was in a very minor one and now it's kind of a phobia to me.)
5. PE involves the Wii and the pool.
6. We didn't have to get up early.

Setting sail ...

Today's the day we start school.  Weirdly, I'm at work at my Mom's house and my husband is getting the kids awake and starting them on algebra and geometry.  I'm 3 miles away and have headphones on, but at the current time I don't hear any whining.  Maybe they haven't started yet?  Here's the tentative schedule we're going to use this week.  I can't paste it into blog so I put it on google docs.  August 2010 Schedule
We use a very simple checklist system and I'm sure that I will be changing it and tweaking it constantly throughout the year.  We'll try and follow it exactly this week and then have a family discussion to see what didn't work about it and what needs to be changed.  This block schedule is very different from the individual checklists we usually use so we are sailing into uncharted territory here.  Hey, it's an adventure. 

Sometimes I think

that I am just not cut out to be a girl. I really don't go in for these things that women are supposed to like to do.  For example, showers.  I don't mean the kind that involve water.  I love those. I mean wedding showers and baby showers.  I do not enjoy them one little bit.  I spent 3 hours today at a shower for a lovely young woman in our family.  I like her very much.  I enjoyed picking out a present that I thought she would like and giving it to her, but I  did not enjoy going to her shower.   It was 3 hours long!  Did I mention that?   For the first hour, we sat around answering questions about how much we know the bride. Then we ate.  Then we watched her open presents, kind of.  I really couldn't see all that well and I definitely couldn't hear, it was so loud.  It seemed to take a long time.   But, at least at showers, you don't have to dress formally. 

Next month we have 2 weddings to go with the 2 showers we have this month. :-(

Like I said, I don't make a very good girl.  I don't have any enthusiasm at all for these kinds of things.   I don't know what my issue is.  I may just have already hit my limit of these kind of events.  As a (retired!) wedding singer I have certainly been to more than my share.  Tons.  I've probably been to 50 weddings in my time.  That's more than average isn't it? 

I also avoid most family reunions, high school reunions and parties so it may just be that I am an introvert.

Tweaking.

I spent some time this morning tweaking the schedule and I'm pretty pleased with it  From this side of trying it, it looks wonderful.  It is such a beautiful thing.  I blocked out Monday for math and also part of Wednesday morning, so the kids can meet with their Dad and discuss any problems that they had with the work he assigned on Monday.  The other days, we'll try and get in the writing, biology, spelling, DVDs, woodworking, going to the library, home ec, assigned reading and various other things.  It looks pretty well perfect now and we won't know what the problems are until we actually start it on Monday.  It's kind of like putting a home-made boat on the water for the first time.  It might leak. 

I guess we'll see.

Revisiting an old post.

I went back and read some older posts on my blog.  I particularly enjoyed this one from 3 years ago today.  http://homeschoolhome.blogspot.com/2007/08/back-to-homeschool-week-challenge_06.html

Not sure.

I am not sure how to get everything I want to do into the schedule for this year.  I've been tweaking and squeezing but I can't seem to get it all in.  I'm may have to do a powerpoint presentation or a huge flow chart.  I need one of those big white boards like the physicists have on "The Big Bang Theory."  They make complicated graphs and flow charts to decide what movies to go to or how to make friends.  I'm not sure if I have the brain power to pull it off, but I'm going to try and have a really good plan in place by Monday.

We have to go to the doctor  on Tuesday for my son's ankle, so we'll go ahead and start with the interuptions of school time as soon as possible.  They always happen so we might as well accept it, right?

In other news, today is my daughter's 14th birthday.  So far, we have not planned what we're going to do about it.  We have tentative plans to maybe invite a cousin over tomorrow night and possibly have cake and ice cream at grandmas, also tomorrow.  Dontcha just love the way we are on top of things?     Our celebrations are pretty low key.  We just give our kids money and let them decide whether they want to spend it on themselves or have a celebration.  It kind of takes some of the fun out of it for me, planning parties and choosing gifts,  but I guess, hopefully, it adds to the fun for them?  Anyway, happy birthday to the world's best daughter.  :-)

They're here!

Our school books from Rainbow Resource!  We're going to be ready to start school on Monday.  Trouble is, we didn't get even half of what I planned to get done this summer done.   Oh well.  I never do.  I should be used to it by now.  :-(   We'll see what we can get done in the next 4 days and then just deal with it. 

A thought.

 I wrote out our schedule in the traditional way I do it, touch each subject every day.  It seemed kind of overwhelming.  I started thinking about maybe a block schedule of just math on Mondays, language arts on Tuesday, etc.  I wonder if that would work?  They'd have more time to 'get into' the subject.  Of course it wouldn't work with PE :-0.  I might do a 2 week schedule with math on Mondays, language arts on Tuesday and then use the other 6 days of the 10 days in a 2 week rotation on the other subjects, so they'd be done intensively every other week.  Does that sound too strange? 

Another outing.

In between working we took a trip to a water park with the homeschool group.  When we planned this back in May or June I was all in favor of doing a ton of things this summer but as the busy, busy summer has went on, I've gotten a little outinged out, so to speak.   I'm tired.   I'm ready to stay home indefinitely but probably won't be able to.  I have enough experience with my life to know that it very rarely pauses for long.  And yes, I do realize that it's my fault.  The kids want to go, go go and I often say yes because I know they don't see their friends as often as they like and with us living in such an isolated area there aren't any neighborhood kids.   I kind of will be glad that school's starting next week because I feel like the structure will be good,  but I'm also afraid that it's going to be a little bit overwhelming with work and with the amount of school we need to get done.

So what will be be doing?

Writing - I can't remember the name of the research paper book I ordered and also we will be trying a novel again with Write Your Own Adventure Novel.
Biology - Apologia (leftover from last year)
Algebra 2 - Teaching textbooks.
Geometry - Life of Fred
Prealgebra - Life of Fred
Math review  http://www.aea11.k12.ia.us/e2t2/dmr.html
Typing - Mavis Beacon
Grammar- Grammar with a giggle.
Woodworking - We'll be doing a few projects from www.knock-offwood.com/

We will also be trying a method where they clean for 20 minutes instead of being assigned specific chores.  hopefully, they'll get the hang of seeing what needs to be done and doing it.  We'll see.  We're also going to make sure everyone is able to run the dishwasher, the washing machine and dryer, the bread machine and the stove.  I'm going to have them doing more meal planning and preparation.  I want to make sure that we've got time to do some of the extras like woodworking, watching a bunch of DVDs, etc. so we may have a different schedule on one day of the week, possibly Thursday, that will include these different things. 

Obviously, the schedule I typed yesterday won't be the last version ... you know how I am.  I'll keep tweaking.  :-)

Maybe I'm getting better at this.

I've typed up a tentative schedule and  placed an order from Rainbow Resource.  It didn't take as long as I thought it would.  We should have our things in plenty of time to start school, officially, on August 9th.  The local public schools here start on Wednesday.  Here's a picture of the schedule on my computer.   The kids will probably think it is too ambitious and there will probably be a ton of whining for the first few days weeks.   We just use a simple checklist system around here.  We've tried all different types of schedules and lists but this seems to be what works best.  Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago how long it took the kids to get their school work done each day and I said "2 to 3 hours for the older 2 kids and 16-18 hours a day for the youngest."  He procrastinates a little.  This year we'll be working around the fact that I'll be gone to mom's and working during the middle of the day.  I'm not sure how that will work out.  It seems to me like it's going to be pretty stressful, but I don't know.  I can picture that every day I'll come home and they won't have even gotten started, but I hope that's not the case.

In other news, the beanbag chair is mostly finished.  It just needs some more stuffing.  I was proud of my daughter for following the pattern and even putting in zippers.  There is still quite a bit of styrofoam in the house but we're working on it.  Kind of.  Actually, we haven't done very much today.  All of us have been feeling kind of tired.    Here's a picture of the chair with Freckles in it.  She likes it very much.  Wasn't it thoughtful of my daughter to make her such a nice, big doggy bed?