Weekly Wrap Up-- Week 27

Monday--

We started out by doing our errands and I had a hair appointment at 9:30, I had the kids work on some school work at the appointment so it wasn't a total loss of time!  We met mom at Panera for a little snack.

I went by house and picked up library books and Book IT coupons. Left and got Dave lunch, dropped that off at his office, picked up the kids BOOK IT pizza, went into Walgreen's to pick up more envelopes to mail rodeo stuff, ran by the library and then HOME.

AND I WAS DRAINED. So I rested while the kids did chores.  We accomplished little but since I have been at home since last Tuesday night... there were things to be done!  :)


TUESDAY...

Bible- the story of Samuel and Eli and Saul becomes king

--- Matt said that (talking about the Ammorite king who was going to gouge out the right eyes of all the Israelites on the East side of the Jordan river) that it would be freaky to walk into a whole town of one eyed guys!  I agree!


We choose our LOVE CHALLENGE...

Math- check

Language-

FLL-- 3 lessons

FLL3---3 lessons

Writing with Ease--- one weeks worth.. It was Caddie Woodlawn, both Kate and Matt want to read it now so I need to go dig it out!  I couldn't find my copy but got two at the library!

IEW- Kate finished lesson 4 and just needs to proof and rewrite

Matt's writing- This week he was kind of boring.. one of his sentences was " I built him."  I asked him if we could jazz that up abit... so I said,  "I built him to fight the evil forces..."  and Matt said, getting excited, "the skeleton army!" 

Perfect! Skeleton army it is... fight on!


LLATL-  Emily made long vowel (Y) wheels, she had fun doing it... so I will print some out for the other vowels too.


History- the kids read Phoebe the spy. 

Science- We are almost finished with chapter 10. FINALLY.  I felt like this was a LOT of information!  I will tell you however when I went to the neurologist., I could look at the posters and read some information with knowledge of what they were talking about which is pretty cool!


Wednesday...

I had my neurologist appointment and Dave got so sick at work that a co worker drove him home.  We stopped at the library on the way home and got in just before the weather got really cold.  We basically had the kids sit around reading library books all day!  The did accomplish math, handwriting, ETC- Emily, and played a game together!  But it was a lost day!

The kids did pick their LOVE CHALLENGE- Emily got

Write a secret note to your sister/ brother and leave it for them.

She was SOOOO excited! In fact she wrote one for both of them



Thursday...

Well Hubbie got up and got going~

I was shocked, but glad that he was feeling better!

We got started on Bible- Samuel and Saul

Instead of using the bible curriculum that just glazes over some stories we are reading right from the Bible right now... it is so interesting to my kids, you know with all the slaughtering going on!  :)

Math- check
handwriting- check
ETC- check

Science-- finished chap 10!!!  I feel like I have ran the gamut with those two chapters for some reason!

History- the kids watched three episodes of Liberty Kids- I am not overly happy with some of their "historical facts" but it gives the kids a sense so that's cool.  We shall watch with trepidation! 

Emily read amazingly today!!!!!!!  YEAH.... Really, I feel like I should shout from the top of a mountaintop!  I am so excited and so very glad because I have been so weary in this department, for so long.

Kate and Matt started Caddie Woodlawn and are enjoying it so far.

all three kids did their LOVE CHALLENGE without prompting today! Emily had a kind word to say to her brother and sister and Kaitlin was a peacemaker at lunch by taking a piece that was more over cooked.  I really am loving this so far!


Friday...

The kids did math, handwriting and that was about all.  We had a family funeral, so learning today was put on hold.  We will get back to it next week.  Thanks Vickie for watching the kids....

This was in a lot of ways a hard week, but we have a weekend to be with family and to just relax and gather our strength to face next week...

 

Embracing Our Lifestyle...

I have friends, blogs and people that I envy how they run their lives. I don't mean they have everything together. I don't mean they have perfect lives. I don't mean that I envy THEIR lives.

I envy how they run their lives.

THEY are in control of their lives. They make decisions for their family based on what their family needs. They order the steps of their day based on what their family needs. They have or do things that are best for their family.

Now I don't mean that I never do these things for my family. We do, but I still struggle with making decisions and worrying about what others will do.

***I still struggle with doing what the world indicates is necessary.

***I still struggle with allowing other peoples lifestyle to govern what ours looks like.

***I still struggle with thinking what I choose to do is wrong or bad or not the best judgement.

***I still struggle with choosing a path that is not conducive to what we want for our family.

*** I still struggle with not setting up our day and home to meet the needs of our family.


I plan on giving more examples of this in the coming weeks... but with this being the year of decor, I want to embrace our lifestyle of being a home schooling family.  I go back and forth with wanting home schooling to invade EVERY area of our life.. but then thinking it isn't okay for our home to look like we home school.  Of course those two thought patterns don't jive.  Now maybe if I had a separate room for our schooling stuff I could of course mesh those thought patterns, but our current living situations dictates where our school room is.  I have thought of moving the dining area back to the "real supposed to be dining room" area and the school room back into the utility room.  

My problems lies with the fact that I don't like how big the "real dining room area is"  I don't know how to separate out that space so that the area doesn't feel WASTED.  The utility room is small, technically large enough for us to school in, but still small.  So should I switch the rooms and just work it out?  What meets our needs more?  Or just EMBRACE our current situation...and let the school room be the MAIN emphasis. 

Well Hubbie decided for me!  He says embrace that we are home schoolers and keep as it... he reminded me of why I moved from the utility/ dining room in the first place.  He said this is just how it is for now... anyone who comes to our house---KNOWS who we are. 

So there you have it.

Ways I am going to embrace this is to decorate the school room in a manner that is whimsy and promotes learning!  I want to not be ashamed of the wall of posters -showing what we are learning!  I will simply display them proudly!  It brings to mind the movie CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN- the new one, not the old one! 

The father is an efficiency expert.. every year they rented a house at the seashore and the dad came up with a gimmick to teach the kids something over the summer.  Well during the movie the dad painted Morse code on the bathroom so that the kids would learn it that summer!  What a way to embrace learning!  Now I don't want to go that far!

I don't want THIS....

Nor do I need THIS..

How about this peaceful, well ordered school room...

I want a bigger white board---- I always run out of room!!!

I know that I want scripture.  One of the main verses we have for this year is 'hiding God's Word in our heart, so that we might not sin against Him"--- I cannot expect my children to learn scripture if I do not show it's incredible importance.  I need to have God's Word be the focal point of our home- I want it in my decor, but not like this...

more like this

You know but of course minus all the ducks.  :) 

GOSH I AM SO PICKY!!!!

Anhoo I digress.

Embracing our homeschooling lifestyle.  It is important to me because it is so much a part of who I feel I am, and who we are as a family.  I do want my home to be welcoming to others, I do want my home to be used for other purposes so there must be a balance that I can find....

What are your thoughts???

 

Weekly Wrap Up -- Week 26

go check out everyone eles at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers...

Monday morning we got up, took Daddy to work, got our MONDAY donuts (new big hit with the kids!), took dry cleaning, ran by the post office, and got home!

MONDAYS are my get out in the morning and run THOSE kind of errands day.

BUT I got home and we started school- I didn't wait to do chores, I didn't start laundry, I didn't log into face book check on important stuff.  I just sat down and started school.

BIG, HUGE, WONDERFUL difference!

So Brenda (I am thinking the chores moved to another time besides the morning is a GO!)

So just on Monday- 4 lessons of Writing with Ease done, 3 lessons in FLL (with accompanying worksheets I print out), 3 lessons done in FLL3, Emily did part of a LLATL lesson, handwriting, Math, BIBLE before we stopped for lunch!  WHOO HOO.

Of course the day went down hill from there BUT heck, at least that got done.

I got on the phone and made 5 eye doctor appointments, 3 dentist appointments, 1 ENT appointments, a neurology appointment, and 3 pediatric well visits.  NOW I JUST GOTTA KEEP EM!

My mom and sister, with my niece in tow came over... so we had a pretty good visit, sans my headache!

Tuesday-- well Monday night landed me at Urgent care and over to the hospital for a CT scan and blood work.  The CT scan didn't show anything unusual but my white count was extremely high, so I am on antibiotics for whatever infection there is, pain med for my actual headache (which has only managed to take the edge off) and a decongestant for some sinus issue (which is making the original headache worse and could possibly be the infection!)

So I slept in on Monday while Dave took Matt to the ENT- which was fine (tonsils and adenoids swollen slightly low numbers possibly due to the tonsils an adenoids.  We simply go back in three months to check again)

The kids did math, handwriting and Explode the Code (Emily) and that was that for the day. 

Day OVER

Wednesday...

 We stayed home in our COLD, COLD weather!  BUT no snow day for us.. we used the opportunity to bust out the school books!  We worked from 9:00-5:00, literally--- with a few breaks!  We had fun stuff too!

It is Groundhog Day so we started our morning off seeing what good Ole' Phil had to say, see what else we did here!

All About Spelling--- FINISHED Level 1, Whoo hoo, onto Level 2 (I already have it, what a blessing!)

Bible- we started the story of Samuel and Eli.

LLATL---check

IEW- Kate is continuing on lesson 4

Math- check

Handwriting- check

History----read Johnny Tremain some more, finished the Matchlock Gun with Emily...

Science--- completely and totally caught up and have read and started reading THE NERVOUS SYSTEM... which we have already done some discussing and activity on...

We worked on our next service project...



We started Making Brothers and Sisters  Best Friends...

We started our MONTH OF LOVE...(I already posted on this here)


We used our Challenge Jars for the second day!

Thursday---

This is Dave's weird morning off once a month, so I was determined to not let it deter us from our awesome schooling... so we got up and got started at 9:00.  HA.  It was really 10:30, but we got started okay!  :0)

I prodded Hubbie out of bed and he sat with us while we did Bible with the kids and then memory work.

and helped them with their LOVE CHALLENGE pick of the day. 

We did FLL (conjunctions, quotation marks and review of adverbs)

writing (Kate did IEW and Matt wrote another Lego episode)

We also continued working  on our science- by starting the crossword puzzle. 

We read more of Johnny Tremain.

Emily and I started reading Felicity and doing a lapbook on her.  I ordered the movie to watch, because no one had it....oh well.


We of course did math, handwriting and Explode the Code.  CHECK!

Emily also did a unit on homophones because on Tuesday she asked me if her soul was on her foot-- she got confused when her gymnastics teacher said something about landing on the sole of your feet.  SO we learned about homophones!  :)

soul- sole
aunt- ant
beat- beet
hare- hair
meat- meet



She also got another book on her chart for LLATL!  WE also started the next lessons.

Whewwww... then my decongestant kicked in and I was DONE!  :)

FRIDAY

The decongestant I am taking is kicking my bootie!  I slept until 10:00 because I took a dose at 8:00.  But Dave had the kids get chores done before he left for work at 10:30.  I got up, made breakfast, took a picture of our ICE STORM- no snow, just a little ice....


and then I went back to bed, where I stayed and the kids got LOADS of physical activity by playing the Wii.

But we had three awesome days!  :)

Weekly Wrap Up...Week 25

SOOO this week has been better, minus us all having yucky, yucky colds!  I have thought about of the reasons that I had such a hard time the last few weeks.  I feel like even though I don't have a resolution for some of those issues, at least KNOWING what they are makes me feel better!

I was DETERMINED to be purposeful.  REALLY.

I got up every day to accomplish something.  (less with being sick, but still something)
I purposefully got the kids up and encouraged them to accomplish things.

I purposefully got started with school or the activity of the day, meaning I DID something!
So just right there is a HUGE improvement!  Especially with being sick I mean!

SMILE!


Bible----We started with Bible- finished up the story of Ruth.  I had Emily be Ruth and go pick up wheat in the field.  I am going to have her DO a lot.  I figure she will be up and about,  PLUS how much more will she remember the story if she is picking up wheat than coloring a sheet! 

We watched The Story of Ruth, 1960  (Netflix)

Language---

FLL2  5 lessons-- we had a lesson on adjectives and wrote a lot of describing words, then I had the kids draw a picture of a cake and write words describing the cake.  After they were done they were able to write a sentence about the cake.

FLL3

All About Spelling- 4 steps.  I had Emily take the list I printed out for her and spell all the letters with magnetic letters on the refrigerator.  Then we read them all out loud.  Each day we went over the list from the day before.  Then made flash cards of the words- broken into sounded out sections.  I had her put the cards together to make a word, when she made the right word she went and wrote it on the board.  I MEAN I am having her DO!

Writing With Ease- 5 lessons

IEW- Kaitlin continued working on Lesson 4, which she finished earlier than scheduled this week!.
She also took her first vocabulary quiz and aced it!  :)

Matt writing- I again had him pick 20 Lego pieces and write 7 sentences about them.  Here are two of his assignments.

Math----

I worked with Emily on her carrying.  Half the problems were right and half the problems were wrong in her last two lessons, so we worked on that.

Whoo hoo only two wrong out of 25!!! We made some definite progress this week!

I put her on the computer to play a computer game also.
She moved onto the next lesson. 
WE also worked on money some more.  I had her be the cashier and make change for me when I checked out!

I have a new favorite math worksheet generator website....Mathfact.com


Matt moved on to the next lesson.
I had Matt do some drills online
He also played on a math website

Kate breezed through to the next lesson
She also worked on drills online
We did some flash cards and did a times drill, just for review.

Science---

I had Kate and Matt start reading chapter 9.

We made a model of a neuron

We played two health related games this week.

We also made a model of the parts of the brain. (pre-talking about chap 10 with our science buddies)

I had Emily work on the body puzzle, we also read a few books.

We also watched The Fantastic Voyage.

History---
we started our Read Aloud

JOHNNY TREMAIN

I am also reading the Matchlock Gun with Emily.

We also wrote a letter to England-- telling how unfair we feel their taxes are. 

ART---

We participated in Sketch Art Tuesday

Something you sketch in science.  THIS worked perfectly for us as we were doing it anyway!



We also started a Valentines count down chain which I got the idea from MOMMY OF TWO.... we are counting down to Valentines week because on Feb. 16 we go on a vacation!

American History---Week 9

We finally started back up with history!   Yeah!

We went back over the 13 colonies.

The kids watched a Drive Through History DVD

We went over the

Sugar Act
Stamp Act
Quartering Act

Boston Massacre

and started talking about The Boston Tea Party


Amy set up a store and the kids got to use their dollars to "buy" stuff.

Then she added a tax to the cost of the goods and the kids had the same amount of money to "buy" and came back to the store.

They witnessed first hand how hard it is to pay high tax!

We showed them what the money of this time period looked like...

Amy read the first chapter of Johnny Tremain.  Which is ONE of my favorite books!

Can you tell the kids were enthused!  :)

Weekly Wrap up... Week 24

So last week I struggled.

I DIDNT wanna do it!

I hemmed and hawed and did the LEAST amount possible known to man!

So no pictures, because I didn't wanna do it, much less post on it!

Remember I wanted to CRAFT!!!!

So this week was better... but not in the usual way for me!  I mean A LOT of school work got done, just not with me!  I had independent schoolers this week!  I still did a lot, but not as much of the SIT DOWN IN FRONT OF MY STUDENTS AND TEACH kind!  This was new for the kids, I don't think they really knew what was going on... but since it not going to BE the new way, I didn't really explain it to them.

SO here is my WEEKLY WRAP up, after you read mine... be sure to go check out everyone else's on Weird, Unsocialized Home Schoolers.  Of course they posted on time and mine isn't going up until way late, but hey it's getting done!

I decided to get caught up in science... over the last semester we did our note booking very half heartily. This was not my original plan, it just sorta happened that way.  One reason is because there was so much reading and by the time we were done listening and explaining- the kids were over it.  We didn't get as much of the note booking done AT our science class because we spent time on other things like games, the experiments... etc.  I am good with that but I do want the note booking done.  So we are going to change up how we are doing science.

I am going to have Kate and Matt read the chapter on their own.  I am going to go over the HIGH points with Emily- it is TOO much information for her.  She is not getting much out of the reading with it being so much.  I am having trouble with her sitting STILL for 5 minutes, much less listening!  SO I will get books that go along with the subject for her to look through and some additional worksheets to learn the vocabulary and important parts of the lesson. 

On Monday after Kate and Matt read the lesson, they will all 3 do the crossword puzzle- EMILY LOVES THEM!  If it is a long lesson they will read over two days and work on the puzzle on the second day.

On Tuesday I will do the work with Emily (she will have been introduced with the crossword puzzle)

On Wednesday the kids will work on their questions in the notebook and I will go over the JEST of the book, explaining anything that needs explaining and doing the DO THIS, sections with them.

On Thursday the kids will all three do their note booking.  Any mini books, copy work, additional worksheets if any.  We will watch a video or do any additional reading on this day. 

Friday is the day we have science (every other week)  and I will have Kate and Matt re read the chapter again, the morning OF science.  Then at science we will do the experiments and other activities.

On the off week, we will have NO science to do and I will not feel guilty!

So this was the kids assignment board for all the work they needed to catch up on this week in their notebooks!  WHEW it was a lot, not all of that is science, just the left side of the board.  But I will tell you that they never batted an EYE.  They just cheerfully sat down and did their stuff.  They cut and glued and shared the book to look up answers to questions.   It just got done!


The kids all did math, Kate is on an easy lesson and breezed through.  Glad to be through the trapezoid lessons!  That took her a while!   Matt, he makes a few simple errors every lesson but has the concepts down so I am having him do A and B, if he has it, I move him to F, for a systematic review.  I feel like we are wasting tooo much time with him and he can press on.  SO that is the plan!  Emily is still having some trouble with the money concept.  For instance, at the store the other day she was purchasing something for 4.75 and she handed the cashier a 10, she said I didn't have four ones and seemed worried about it.  I reminded her that the cashier will give her change.  She just hasn't CAUGHT something so we are going to do more games!!!  I cant afford to shop more!  :)

I had Matt pick like 20 Lego pieces and build something- his choice.  Then I told him to write a story about it with 5-8 sentences.  He did so great.   Here is his build...

His story is on the other computer and I am too lazy to go get it.. so I will tell you the plot of the story.  This is  a rebel droid.  He has been in battle twice, he fought well and then he died.  He obviously wrote more but I don't remember all those Star War terms!

Okay, I know little boys and their handwriting is yuck... but this is his paper from the beginning of the year..

and this is his practice this week.. Do you think he is getting worse??

I told him his handwriting needed to be better for handwriting or I would assume he needed more practice!  I think he is just rushing through.  But I am seeing very little improvement!



Kate finished lesson three in EIW... yes we are going very slow, but I plan to work a little faster the rest of the school year on it!  This lesson was to make a key word outline.  She did this part pretty well, then she had to make a paragraph out of her key word outline.  WELL her paragraph was like twice as long as the original one.  I kind of freaked out... so I called my friend Tara- who has been through all the training for EIW and asked her what she thought.  We went over that she definitely had all the points down, she had re worded and written new sentences, while adding all her 'ly' words and being descriptive.  Tara said it was not the POINT to make it longer but that if that came easy and naturally to her then it is fine!  SO whewww.

I felt better after talking to her in general and will remember to call next time when I am worried about something!  I came back into the room after talking to Tara and told Kaitlin that I had called Mrs. Tara to ask about some things on her writing assignment and that Mrs. Tara said she did a great job!  She was very proud!  I didn't get a copy of the final draft and she has actually gone on to lesson 4~

We did spelling, this has been a nightmare with Emily the last two weeks. I am so frustrated and I know she is frustrated too.  But we will just keep plugging on.  Last week we had a really bad spelling lesson day and I just stopped mid lesson.  Later that day I had her sit down again and put shaving cream on the table for her to write her words in.. I thought OH what A GOOD MOM!  She put her finger in and did one word- not excitedly and looked up at me and said, can I just do this on paper.

AKKKKKKK...really!  So we cleaned it up and got out some paper.  oh well.

Last but not the least by any means.. we started the story of Ruth in Bible. 

And that.. plus church class, gymnastics, tap, chores, fun and history class.  No art this week- off for MLK day.  So I am getting back on track and will hopefully have a better mind set next week!  But Saturday and Sunday I am not going to think about it!   :0)   Have a nice weekend!