on track...

In my funk I have not really been up in the school room.  We have simply done school downstairs at the table and I actually like it... except for having to clean it off all the time of course!  I also do not like that I don't have all my stuff.  I am less likely to have the kids read "x" book, or play a game because I am not WHERE THE STUFF IS.  So we moved all our school items back upstairs to the school room and I am tidying and readying.

For instance I have a very large book shelf of historical reads... When we started out in the school year after we moved our "current" reads took up half the shelf.  We are down to half of the top shelf.  I need to buy new books/ get library books for next unit of history and for the rest of the curriculum.  We are in a new century people....

I moved the few leftover civil war books down off the top two shelves and all that are left are what we are currently studying!  There are a lot of reads for between 1900 and 2012!  And we are getting through them by July 31!!!  Yes, I know.  It will be a tight squeeze!  We honestly will not get as much (extra) reading done as we did the first part of the year because I have put us in a time crunch-- which I don't usually do.  However I want to start our new curriculum on August 1-- so time crunch it is.

I am adding-- because I am crazy like that... some additional math and spelling work for each of the kids.  Math- because I am feeling the draw of OTHER curriculum and since I want to keep at Math U See, I feel like I need to fill in some holes.  Dave and I are discussing math right now and deciding what we will do.

We are adding for Emily- sight word/ word wall activities to help with her spelling of common, every day words that she might not have learned the rule for but needs to know how to spell. (read MOMMY is tired of spelling crap for her all the time!)    Matt and Kate are going to now be responsible for not only knowing the definitions of their vocabulary but also knowing the spelling-- which I supposed is just a good idea right!


Math --- ahhhh math... so much stress in my life feels related to math!  Emily is bucking at learning her multiplication tables.  She knows them one day but answers a problem wrong in math and I am like WHAT GIVES.  So we are doing flash cards daily, playing math games daily and doing drills.

In addition Matt and Kate are doing drills also...because well it wont hurt them and Katy couldn't answer what 3/4 of an hour was the other day without giving me the blank stare....(in her defense the book gave a word problem where she had to add fractions and then figure out how many minutes in an hour that fraction was without reducing the fraction(9/12) which is 45... but then they asked her to reduce the fraction (3/4) and answer which one allowed her to come to the conclusion of 45 minutes in a hour FASTER.  I think she felt like she had to really FIGURE out the 3/4 of an hour without realizing DUH it is 45 minutes SOOO MUCH easier... But anyway.  We are doing drills. because I said so.


We are fixing to watch a SWARM of Netflix movies because there are SO many for our current time period! FUN.  I loaded up my queue and now I just have to be really good about returning them quick so I have turn around!  I also need library books-- which involves me paying a fine-- I KNOW YOU ARE SO SURPRISED. 

So basically I am just getting myself back on track--- I have been headed in the right direction this whole time but I felt myself drifting.... gotta stay on track!