Learning and Growing from Home

Mom Fail

2010-09-01T11:47:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I allowed the misbehavior of one child to colour our entire day and to discourage me and dictate my behavior. It was a total parenting fail. But it ended in the child picking himself up by the bootstraps and with apologies all around. Proving once again that God can redeem ALL things for good and for his glory.

Yesterday, during my devotional time with the littles, I found myself getting frustrated. Why was I frustrated? Because, once again, it was taking so long to 'get through' the reading! Because my beloved little ones kept interupting to make comments on, and ask questions about the things of God! As soon as I took a breath and asked myself why I was frustrated, I realized how silly it was. And how amazing their faith is, and how great their knowledge of the things of God and how deep their questions are.
What a blessing! And it was also a wonderful reminder that teaching and learning about God are not just another thing to be ticked off of my to do list. I am discipling my children, with every word and action, I am showing them God. And usually, I am doing a crappy job of it!
God, please give me patience and an abundance of love for these precious little lives you have entrusted to me!

Week 3

2010-08-27T15:42:00.000-06:00

My littles have overcome my lethargy today and insisted on 'doing school'. Out came the Horizons math books. I love doing math with them, they are super enthusiastic and I think they really appreciate the quick lessons and the definite beginning and end of the work. My 6 year old is adorable as he has to add teeth or a pacman around every greater than and less than sign in each lesson!
This week is week three of our year and the first that my husband has been at work. I hate to admit that I have struggled with motivation already. I think that my constant of exhaustion due to being in the last few weeks of this pregnancy and not sleeping, is a definite contributing factor. The older boys have completed their assignments though, and the littles and I have done a little each day, as well as kept up with our reading.
I have made executive decisions to let them keep playing when they are getting along and to spend lots of time in the sun and pool while the weather allowed. Especially since it has been cold and wet, and the weekend looks to continue that trend. My husband and I both feel that this is one of the lovely freedoms that homeschooling allows. The freedom to take advantage of sunny weather and moments together. The freedom to take breaks in our days to play, chat or share a warm pot of tea. Yesterday, I took off for a mid-afternoon date with my husband as we did a little dream-building and planning. I love our home educating lifestyle!
My husband and I have also been a bit lax with our eldest two as their friends are still on summer vacation. They have been allowed lots of freedom to hang out with their friends and take part in activities. My eldest is headed off to do some event preparation work with some family friends who have a production company. If he does well, it could maybe turn into occasional work for him. And as a homeschooler he has the freedom to work when other kids have to be in classes, as long as he keeps up with his studies.
Anyhoo, I am feeling excited and hopeful as I look towards the coming months. It looks like my husband will be working close to home, teaching and therefore home every night. Meaning he will continue to be a large part of the school part of our lives and I am so thankful for this big change. It means that not all the responsibility falls on my shoulders. I can facilitate their learning and do most of the implementation, but he can help keep us accountable and even help with marking!
I am also enjoying doing Sonlight once again. Having everything scheduled out, without giving up my weekends to do that, is simply amazing. All the kids love checking off their work each day with the date stamp I bought. I think they get a real sense of accomplishment out of that. And my 12 year old is loving doing the 4 day a week schedule, because he knows if he keeps up with his work that he can take time off to do what he likes. He is doing a fantastic job.

Day 2

2010-08-10T17:13:00.002-06:00

Awesome second day and much faster. The teens were both finished around lunch and the littles were soon after. I went over most of the bigger boys work while the littles had their morning break and then Dad went over math when he came home. We made the decision for our eldest to go back and review for the next month or two, before moving on to advanced Algebra and Trig. I have not been really great at keeping up with marking and keeping him accountable, and he has not wanted us to think he isn't brilliant and therefore he has some learning gaps. We had already made the decision to do that with the 13 year old and I think it will be great.
So thankful for my husbands involvement and interest. We need him to keep us accountable, be our backstop and our principle and it has been a role that time and circumstance have made him reluctant to take on. But he is willing now, and it is just in time.

Day 1

2010-08-09T17:08:00.001-06:00

Well, we got the school year off to a great start. Daddy joined us this morning for Bible and he said a prayer and blessing for each child and me and for our school year. I can't think of another year when he has been with us for the first day, what a positive beginning!
With A(5) and J(6), we just did our reading this morning while E(2) climbed on us. I thought that it would be easiest to save the bookwork for E's naptime, at least for my sanity. After our reading, the littles went outside to play in the pool for a couple of hours and the big boys joined them for a break after lunch. By 1:30 we were back at the table for the bookwork portion of our day. Having Daddy home was such a blessing, he put E down while I got started on math with J. Then he came and did math with A, while I finished math with J and we got started on Language Arts. I think it is going to be difficult to balance working with the 2 of them at the same time because they both need my complete attention throughout their math and LA work. At least today, J had copywork, so I was able to start A on her LA while he laboured with the printing. We didn't make it to handwriting skills today, but that is okay, they did get some practice during LA.
The last thing I did with the littles today was science, we did some reading about animals. Good thing that was all, because they were both done.

My older boys worked mostly independently today. B(15) worked his way through all his Bible, Literature, History, Chemistry and Math alone. It took him from 9 until after 4, so I think this year will be quite labour intensive for him. R(13) worked until 4:30, but he did take a long bathroom break and he is easily distracted by what everyone else is doing and saying. We may need to set him up with a desk away from his siblings. And maybe some noise dampening headphones! He did most of his Bible and reading this morning and this afternoon he did Math and then we worked through his LA together. I think we will do about half of what the curriculum asks, at least at the beginning. Like one dictation a week as opposed to 2. He did work fairly diligently today though and I am proud of his effort. We do need to work Science into our day, but today was a good start.

As of today, we still have not decided what R will be doing this year. Will he home educate or will he go to Junior High? If he stays home, will we continue with a more traditional approach, like the Sonlight etc., or will we do cyber-school as he has requested? I really don't know. And I am not sure of where God is leading us on this issue. We only applied at one junior high and he was told they had no space for him. There are plenty of other schools, but I am really not sure where to even begin to look. We also have the opportunity to reapply at our first choice school, but I don't know if we should. We prayed that God would close the doors that were not His best for R. I kind of feel like God already closed that door, so do we really need to reopen it? More praying and investigation are needed to make this choice, I guess. I would really just like it to be done! I do know that I don't want to spend another year fighting with my beautiful son every day about school.

Happy New Year!

2010-08-08T16:36:00.000-06:00

We are starting a new school year tomorrow! I am sure that my teenagers are not that excited, but my kindergartener and grade 2-er have been begging me ever since our Sonlight boxes arrived to 'do school'. I usually don't get myself and the kids really going until the end of September, but this year I want us to have a head start. We have a baby due on October 6, so I would really love to get us into a good rhythm before then. Especially so that the teens can keep themselves going when I am babymooning. I would imagine that the littles and I will do a bunch of reading and games during that period but the math and writing may get a little break.

2010-05-21T13:47:00.000-06:00

Apparently I can no longer call myself a blogger! But I feel like writing today, so I thought I would do a little catch up here as we near the end of our year.
I have been feeling discouraged and frankly sick of homeschooling throughout the past few months. More to the point, tired of fighting with the kids about school, tired of poor attitude and tired of the endless demands that home educating and parenting 5 kids puts on me. That may have a lot to do with my husband working 100+ hours a week for the last 3 months and basically doing this all by myself. And being physically exhausted and therefore having little emotional or physical energy to put into anything. Maybe.
Regardless, we will be making changes in the fall. We may be putting one or both of our teenagers in school in the fall. At the very least, my 'soon to be' grade 8 student will be cyberschooling. I need him to be responsible to someone else for the schooling. I don't want to keep fighting with him about school every day, we have other stuff to work on and I want to keep a relationship with him!
My eldest can be quite self-reliant and I know we can successfully keep home educating through graduation, though there are many things to be said for him going to high school for a while. A different idea was presented to me today and I am really thinking that it would be a fantastic one for us. We continue to traditional home educate and he registers in a local university as an undeclared student taking one course at a time while he finishes high school! We have a couple of really home education friendly college options here in our city. I am leaning towards this option, especially since I just ordered him a Sonlight core! I ordered a ton of stuff from them this week and I am expecting delivery on Monday. Woohoo! I can't wait for 'box day'!

Mid semester check in.

2009-10-27T12:55:00.004-06:00

Today, for the last hour, I have been hiding in my room instead of teaching school. I do need to go back down and do some math and writing with my littles, they totally deserve my attention, but I needed a break.
My twelve year old just refuses to cooperate at all and hasn't cooperated all year. I have about had all I can take and I sent him to his room. We have some ideas and I won't give up on him, but I am tired of the constant and stubborn refusal to do as he is told and the attitudes.
My 14 year old has made a big turn around this year. He is doing a great job of getting down to work in the mornings and cranking it out. Thank goodness. We have wee spots of trouble, bits of attitude, work I assumed was done but is not. Nothing too big and glaring though.
The 12 year old's attitude is unfortunately catchy. My 5 year old, an extremely eager learner, balks every time I ask anything of him. I get 'no's' and 'why do I have to do that's' and moaning and groaning and throwing one's self on the ground in tantrum if I ask the simplest thing of him. But then he turns around and begs me to do school with him.
Girly is eager to 'do school' as well, and she is pretty easy to get along with. Some whining and such, but mostly easy.
I am still finding it difficult to balance the attention my 12 year old seems to need and everyone else's needs. Especially when it comes to taking time for lessons with my littles. We are still a work in progress. sigh.

Saturday Sum Up

2009-10-03T15:04:00.002-06:00

We are settling into a nice routine around here. After a few hellish days with my 12 year old, things seem to be turning around. The big boys are getting their core, independent schoolwork done quickly and quite well, and for that I am extremely grateful. I am even finding time to fit in daily reading, printing and math lessons for my littler kids.

Things came to a standoff with the 12 year old about a week and a half ago. I was tired of watching him waste 5 hours NOT doing his school work, and giving me attitude and then wasting more time not doing his chores. I laid it out for him. He either does what he is told or I was going to stand behind him, with my hands on his shoulders to make sure he stayed in his seat and on task. I figured if he was working, I could gently rub his back and if not, I could give his shoulder a little squeeze to remind him to stay on task. He needs a LOT of attention and positive reinforcement. He acts out continually if he does not get those things. He especially needs physical touch, hugs and cuddles and back rubs.
I have been praying and worrying and praying some more about his behaviour and how to help him to find motivation internally as well as give him what he needs. As well as praying for patience so that I didn't end up yelling at him and hurting his heart.
Well the day started off badly and only got worse until lunch. Finally, something broke and he decided to get his work done. I was praising God! The next day was a honeymoon and things were pretty okay. Day three was hell. I just kept praying that God would give me guidance so that I would be helpful to my son and never hurtful.
Finally my son just outright said to me that I could not make him do anything. And I told him that he was right. I can't physically make him do anything. But I can make his life a living hell. (Maybe I lost my temper a bit with that statement, the outright defiance will do that to a person.) I told him that as of that moment, he no longer had any privileges, toys, electronics, activities. He could not go to youth, go to a friends, play with toys, play video games, go out of our yard without express permission. He was done. He would have to earn every privilege, every outing.
Then I went to my room for a quick cry and headed back down to continue to supervise and guide. I knew that I had to follow through and stay vigilant with him. I couldn't even leave him unsupervised. I convinced his Dad to go with me on this and back me up.
The next day was pretty hard. But we kept following through. On the third day, he sat down to do his bookwork before I had even brought the little kids down for breakfast. He smiled. He laughed. He was polite to me, kinder. And we praised this behaviour (once I got over the shock). He started earning back privileges. He missed the corn maze trip with the youth group last week, but this week he was able to attend the service. His better attitude and behaviour has continued and I have continued to be vigilant and to reinforce the good behaviour. I just pray that we can create new habits together that will last.
It was like having a brand new family culture this week. What a blessing. Thank you God.

2009-10-03T14:56:00.002-06:00

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This high school course has been highly recommended to me: How to Become a Superstar Student.

Teensy Tuesday

2009-09-15T10:46:00.006-06:00

Excited today, B will be breaking out the new microscope. He will be checking out bacteria growth in his pond experiment. I think I will pull out the Discovery Toys microscope as well and let A and J check out the slides. They will think that is the coolest.
I have also assigned the boys to do a report on a Canadian Explorer. Basically because B needs something to fill his time:) He is continually looking for the next thing to do and without the Sonlight core I am just pulling stuff together on my own. And I have not spent enough time planning yet this year...
Our Draw Today program is going well, at least for B, he is totally into it and enjoying it. I wish that he required more of himself in the way of editing, revising because he does a wonderful job that would be fantastic if he would just spend the time necessary to keep at it until it was perfected. Although, it is hard to be the other way, like R and I. We are perfectionists and that can really hinder creativity. R does not really want to do the art, because he doesn't think he is good at it. That is why the Draw Today program is so wonderful, because they can succeed at it and feel talented. I can't wait to see what he does with it.
Right now, my R is driving a little batty. He refuses to stay on task for even five minutes. sigh. It is noisy here, I will give him that, the whole time we were working on our math, the decibel level was insane.
A and J both want to be involved in everything. J has me asking him addition and subtraction problems up to 10 and he writes them down and solves them. He is fantastic at the solving and we are working on the printing. A wants to "do math" as well. She had me dot write problems for her to copy. Couldn't just do the numbers, she had to have problems to solve like her brothers.
Home educating with 5 kids from 1 to 15 is never dull, and usually not that easy either.

As for the rest of our lives, B starts his YMCA volunteering today with Afterschool Mania. Basically he is a referee for a bunch of elementary school kids and I am sure he will love it. We need to run to the book store to get his first book for his Modern Classics course. He has 12 chapters to read for next Monday. I am sure he will be done by tomorrow:)I also need to take the boys to get their agendas still. I really want them to start planning their time on their own.
Big B is working nightshift all week, so our days and nights are without him. I hate it, but I am hoping to make it a week of afternoon fieldtrips to help keep it quieter for him. And to keep me sane. Today, we will take a walk in the sun, the weather is gorgeous still.

Week 2

2009-09-14T11:12:00.005-06:00

Friday was more of the same but I did some math evaluation exams with the boys to see if we could skip to the next math level. We won't be skipping:) Which means that I need to order a new curriculum for R AND B now, unfortunately for my wallet. I was hoping R would be able to jump ahead because I have the next years curriculum that my friend gave me. For now I am printing off the Jump Math introductory fractions unit for him.

I will be ordering Teaching Textbooks 7 and Algebra 1 as well as the corresponding Life of Fred books as a fun add-on.

B will be working on his pond experiment today and starting his Modern Classics online Socratic Dialogue class. I am a bit geeked up over his reading list, some of my faves and books I want to read.

Both boys are continuing with their Writing Strands assignments and I am hoping to start The Latin Road to English Grammar again this week and Rosetta Stone French next month.

Some of my plans have been thwarted by missing books. J read Flat Stanley and then proceeded to lose it. I read the economics book I want the boys to read, left in on the couch and it went missing in the clean up. ugh. Apparently I need to clean up the family room. Again. For the third time this summer I need to declutter it after my kids have been cleaning it. They seem incapable of putting things away properly, they just keep stuffing everthing in and under stuff. So frustrating.

3

2009-09-10T15:31:00.003-06:00

I realized today that I am not getting an opportunity to work with my littles. Between refereeing and guiding my older 2 and dealing with baby and home, I am not finding many teaching moments with A & J. I am going to have to schedule myself a bit more strictly I think, rather than going with the flow. ugh.
My goal is to start Flat Stanley with them this week and next week I want to add in reading, handwriting, and math games/activities. I also want to start taking dictation from them of their stories, and maybe have J do some dictation/copywork as his printing skills improve. As for science, nature study and appreciation will comprise the most of our work, I will add in fun experiments as we go along as well as lots of good books to read. Oh, I should go to the library and find Magic School bus videos, the kids love the books, though I find them painful to read. (I yawn so much while reading aloud and they are kinda long(-: )
After we read Flat Stanley, I will have them make their own Flat Stanley to send on an adventure by mail. I am hoping that our Stanley will fly to many places (maybe some of my blog friend's homes!) And the kids and I will map his journey's and hopefully find out a little about the places that he travels to.

Today was one of those days with R, it is 3:40pm and he has just finished his puny amount of school work and has not done his chore for the day (dishes). I have had to get after him numerous times today and he will not stay on track. Sigh. I am trying to stay positive and to keep my discipline positive, but I can tell you that my patience has really been tried today.

So the boys did their art, we watched the second segment of the video, B worked on a silhouette and R was editing his practice drawings in Draw Today. They worked on Day 3 of their Writing Strands assignments, B put together his pond experiment and R finished reading module 5 in Exploring Creation with General Science. I need to pick up printer ink tonight to print out his review and the fractions review I have for him. R also did spelling.
We will do our Bible reading tonight at supper as J was at a friend's all day, and I am about to put in the CD for bible memorization, A New Commandment.

I am praying for the key to unlocking R's motivation and love of learning. Pray for patience for me, please!

day 2

2009-09-09T22:30:00.001-06:00

Z's first birthday today! I can't believe that a whole year has passed already, what a blessing he has been to all of us.
Today R did spelling and what a difference a year makes. Last year he felt like a failure at spelling, he had a super-hard time with it. This has never made much sense to me because he adores reading. Over the past year he has continually challenged himself with more and more difficult reading material. And I think that may have affected his spelling abilities. We did a pretest for his lesson and he only had 2 wrong out of 20. I can tell you that he felt terrific, like he could just maybe be a good speller if not a great one!
Both boys did their Writing Strands and science, we finished Daniel 7 and the littles had their first swimming lessons. J was completely in his element, and both kids loved their lessons and felt very competent.
After lunch we went for a nature walk. I use the term 'nature' very loosely, there is a man-made lake nearby surrounded by trees and home to many waterfowl, muskrat and birds. B needed to collect pond water for a biology experiment and the kids love to watch the animals and explore. Turned out that the city had sprayed herbicide?!? in the area the day before, so we didn't do leaf rubbings or sit on the grass and sketch like we would have liked to. (Am I the only one who thinks it is inane to spray herbicide by a wetland? Or really anywhere in the city?)
We ended our day with breakfast supper, carrot muffins for birthday cake and lots of Z cuddles. At both 9:09 am and 9:09 pm on 09/09/09 I was nursing and cuddling my newly 1 year old baby Z, what a perfect way to bookend his special day.

First Day

2009-09-08T15:44:00.002-06:00

I told the kids that this year we were going to enforce an reasonable start time so that we have time to accomplish our goals and still have some fun. Today was the first early morning. The children are to be ready to work at 8:30 am. This means that I want them fed, dressed, teeth brushed and sitting at a clean table with their books. I have a feeling that this is going to take a while to become habit. B was up, mostly because we made him get up before I took my Dad to the airport at 6:30 this morning. I wanted him to keep an ear out for A and J who were still sleeping.
Even with a warning call before I arrived home, B was not ready to go by 8:30 and R was not ready to work until 10:30am. He would not get out of bed and then he would not get moving. So tonight he has to be in bed by 8pm. I thought that would be a natural consequence of sleeping in... and I have a feeling that his father will awaken him before he leaves for work at 6:30am. Poor kid.
As for me, I am going to try and go to bed earlier and get up early to exercise and do devotions each morning before we get started.

***
I am going to try and keep a written record of each child's assignments and daily work here this year. Doesn't make for exciting reading, but I need to keep track.
B, R and I watched a short video on Stephen Covey's site about goal setting, we will watch the whole series and then set our own goals for the year. We went on to do the first of our Writing Strands' lessons, B in book 5, and R in book 4. I started reading the Evaluating Writing book. Wow. I realized that I have been hyper-critical of their writing, rather than encouraging it. Changing that immediately.
R did a spelling lesson to round off English for the day.

We read the first half of Daniel 7 together, it was a bit dry for the kids after the exciting stories they had enjoyed over the previous chapters. A and J went over their Sunday School memory verse and then we started to memorize Psalm 1 (in song) together. B is going to memorize Ps 136 and R chose Ps 43. (I probably need to check, I have a feeling that Ps 43 is super short.)

B reviewed his first science chapter, as I am going to retest/review the chapters he has done as he finishes the lab work he couldn't do previously due to missing supplies/microscope.

We finished off the day with Art. B and R started the Draw Today program, B loved it, but R is finding it difficult so far. I think as he relaxes and progresses that he will enjoy it more. He is very self-critical and a perfectionist like his mother and that can definitely hinder creativity.

Right now the boys are off on a walk, E is sleeping, or I would have taken all the kids. I am going to discipline us all to get at least an hour of activity a day, especially before we get on our electronics. The boys were asking for computer time, so I sent them on a walk. And R has homework (his writing strands) before he has any chance of computer time. I think he will not have any at all, as a result of a poor attitude for most of the day. ugh.

Tomorrow is a new day and I look forward to continuing our adventure then. Hopefully we will all be renewed in spirit and mind.

Fresh New Year

2009-08-28T13:27:00.002-06:00

I am really excited to start a new year of home educating. There have been many days in our journey that I wished we could just quit, but there is nothing like a fresh September and a big pile of books to awaken my joy.
We are starting out a bit slow this year. Science, Drawing, Writing and maybe a little Latin and/or French. Those are the resources I have on hand. Oh and economics and we will probably continue watching our Canada: A People's History videos. I am just hoping and praying that we can order our math and our Sonlight soon.
Nothing like opening that box of Sonlight, full of new books and *rubs hands gleefully* schedules! We don't always follow schedules that well, but I am hoping that my big boys will be working very independantly this year and it will be so helpful for their work to be already scheduled. Talk about a time saver!
For math I am making the change from Saxon to Teaching Textbooks this year, hoping to save my R from another year of torturous (to him) repetition. He just doesn't need the repetition of Saxon and the fighting with him to 'do math' has made us both hate math by now. I love Saxon, I think it teaches thoroughly, but it is just not a fit here. I will be starting him off with the Life of Fred books only though, I haven't seen them yet, but I have high hopes for the funny stories/curriculum wrapped into one.
We are still enjoying the last vestiges of summer around here, one last steamy weekend by the pool, hanging with friends. Next week we shall get back to schedules, and I am happy for it. I am counting the days until I can order the rest of my books!

ps if you are intersted in Sonlight, please use my button on the left to check out the site and sign up for a free account. You will recieve $5 off your first order and I will benefit as well!
God bless you as you start out this new year with your kids.

Charlotte Mason

2009-06-06T13:36:00.003-06:00

I am just beginning my journey into Charlotte Mason's books, ideas and beliefs and it is changing my life. I am terribly excited about our future as a family.

Developmental Toys on sale!

2009-05-18T09:25:00.003-06:00

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Toys for a three month old: They will enjoy ‘frolic play', reaching for objects and will repeat enjoyable activities. Believe it or not, they will respond to ‘no' (about half the time) and will start babbling.

Toys for a six month old: They'll search for hidden objects (object permanence). They'll reach for themselves in the mirror, play peekaboo, crumple paper, roll from their stomach to their back and even respond to their name.

Toys for a nine month old: They are pushing toy cars, playing pat-a-cake and looking for hidden sounds. The baby toys they are playing with are also getting more fun.

Life lessons.

2009-04-29T10:42:00.002-06:00

So we took a month off of school, not a week. I needed the break and so did the kids. They read tons of books and played outside, so not a waste.
This morning, I have been trying to get them going on their book work while I read about a new-to-me math program called Jump Math. The book work is not happening, but what is may be more beneficial. The big kids are taking time to teach the little ones about chess and now go-fish. How can I make them stop to do yet another math lesson!?

My own spring break

2009-03-16T14:43:00.002-06:00

I think we are taking the week off of bookwork. I am way too tired of fighting with R and I need a break. The kids played outside and are watching movies while I hide in my room with a home-made latte and my computer. The bliss is almost overwhelming!
It has been a rather lovely day, the big kids have played with the little kids and kept them amused, they even played with the baby for an hour. I love that they are all so close and that B spent enough time out of the house this weekend that he is not nearly so testy as he has been of late.
I am giving the kids a completely free day, I even did R's dishes. B did go out and shovel though, poor baby. hee hee.
I am going to get caught up on my marking this week and get re-organized I hope. We are almost done with our curriculum for the year and I can't wait to change some stuff up for next year. I am going to go all computer based for Ry next year with the addition of a bunch of good books to read. All computer taught, all self-marking and give us both a break! I am going to use curriculum with the others too, I need the safety net of knowing it is all being covered for a while. I am so tired of stressing about it and trying to piece things together and going against my own grain. I think sonlight will be the best way to go, one-stop shopping. Best thing is, B can be responsible for all his own stuff, he is way more than capable. We will most likely add in some of our school board's online courses for fun and interaction. Now I just have to pray for the resources to afford curriculum, as I haven't been able to for the last few years.

Hmm.. think it is time to get out of my jammies and go out into the sunshine for a while.

Focus Locus

2009-01-15T12:55:00.002-07:00

Yesterday and today, R has listened to music on headphones while doing his math. This has seemed to help him focus and he has completed his assignments in about 20 minutes as opposed to hours of sitting and doing nothing. Not sure if it is really the music or just a behavior anomoly, but I will continue to let him do this as long as it lasts.

A and J and I did writing and reading today already as well as cuddling up on the couch and reading the Magic School Bus and the Human Body. Tons of information in that book, a bit much for one setting with those two, but they sat through the whole thing and we even discussed it a bit.

I need to go through the microscopy kit today to make sure B has what he needs for his labs next week. Maybe while I have the microscope out, I will let A, J and R look at their cheek cells as explained the the Magic School bus book. And find on the internet how to take photos with my microscope!

Mid-January

2009-01-14T14:57:00.002-07:00

We are easing back into a schedule this week.
For the preschooler/kindergartner
First we pu together our magnetic calendar for January.
A, J and I are sitting together at the table with slates and chalk. We took out the capitol letter cards and made some with our shapes and now they are playing. A also did the F page in HER exercise book. J practiced writing numbers while A and I read a number book.
Her and I also went over the short vowel sounds for a, e, i & o; she doesn't seem to have retained much so far, but repetition is the key. It is good for J to hear the sounds as well, even though he is reading quite well.
For some social studies we read O Canada, our National Anthem together. It has beautiful photos to go with the words and then short history/bio of the anthem and its writers.
For science we listened to Jonathon Park and I will go through the lesson with Ry later and they will listen.

R & B are doing math, writing strands, handwriting. B started his Biology program this week, it is his high school class. He is also doing Logic and Greek & Latin roots/vocab. R is doing spelling workout. B is done for the day and R is barely started. ugh. It's 3pm! He just put in some earphones and seems to be getting down to it finally.

It's 2009!

2009-01-05T14:54:00.004-07:00

Today we should be getting back at it, but I am not feeling it. My brain is still on holiday. But it has tuned out to be a pretty fab day anyway.

The littles had J's new art kit out before I was up this morning and they were sculpting:) Other than that it was a lazy morning.
After lunch, I put on Mozart's Magic Fantasy, part of the Classical Kids stories. It is based on Mozart's Magical Flute Opera and I bought the study guides that are full of interesting tidbits for a comprehensive music study and cross curricular ideas. So we just listened to the first act and read a bit and discussed what we heard. The kids responded quite well. Then J and A played with a spelling puzzle they got for Christmas while R started his chores.
We were listening to a Jonathan Park Cd, which they also received for Christmas. I found it informative and entertaining, if not a bit preachy. Okay a lot preachy. The kids on the other hand, loved it! I also have the study guide that one of my dear children has already misplaced. I hope to find in and go over the information in there. edit: The study guides are all available on the website as pdf's, as are ideas for real life adventures for your family!
Now we are listening to G.A. Henty's With Wolfe in Canada on cd while the kids paint and draw. J is experimenting with colour mixing and A is having fun making shapes with her brush and stamping. The big boys are drawing and helping with the littles.
I think my off day has been rather productive. Maybe we will learn some kitchen skills in a bit.

sigh...

2008-12-09T11:22:00.004-07:00

Well. We had a fabulous week and a write-off week and this week is still up in the air. So far, I am frustrated. I am tired. I am thinking it may be time to call Christmas vacation. We will finish this week and see. I am afraid that if I take too much time, then it will take ages to get back in the groove. Maybe we can just do a bunch of fun, Christmassy activities. Elaborate on our advent studies... do some hands-on learning and more field trips.
This past week, we went to the science centre twice and spent tons of time in the gallery upstairs with all the hands-on demos. Lots of physics experiments to try. A loves the discovery gallery and the water tables. She could spend hours in there, and I love that the mess is not in my house.
For advent, I am using this page from the teachingmom.com site. Lots of links for extensions, though some were dead. It is a terrific resource.
From Pioneer Woman I found SpellingCity.com which I am going to try with R, spelling and R are not friends, I am hoping computer time might help.

Trying to keep my head above water here, praying to find my joy and patience.

HP giveaway

2008-12-02T11:13:00.002-07:00

There must be some homeschoolers out there who could use some new computers, here is a giveaway for 4 new HP's plus a bunch of other goodies!
I know I don't usually do this, but this is an amazing giveaway. Over 6 grand in HP computers and accessories! Check it out. http://jk9.qlnk.net/ #glmagic

Performing Arts field trips.

2008-11-25T21:14:00.003-07:00

The boys had an oportunity to see G.F. Handel's oratorio Solomon last week. They had an educational evening complete with free pizza and face time with the counter-tenor Daniel Taylor and other performers. The kids loved it and learned lots. I only wish I had been able to attend.

They also attended a play last month, The Forbidden Phoenix, which is loosely based on Chinese Immigrants brought to Canada in the 1800's to work on the railroad. The kids said it was 'interesting'. Oh well, they can't love everything.

I am hoping to take them all to Little Red Riding Hood next week, I love living in the city and being able to take advantage of so many performing arts opportunities. I wish I had known earlier that the Moscow Ballet was performing Sleeping Beauty tonight, that would have been a dream come true to me. Maybe Girly and I will have another chance to see it one day.

This week in home education;)

2008-11-25T18:04:00.004-07:00

I feel like this has been our most productive school year since our very first year 5 years ago. In many ways we are still having the same struggles we have had for the past 4 years. R is still spending vast amounts of time in procrastination and stall tactics. Math is a bone of contention for him. He has no problem learning it, but hates doing the lessons. Today was a great day for math, he did his test in under an hour, but unfortunately that is the exception, not the rule.

I feel good about this week, and this year in general. I have been more engaged and I think that is the key. I have to not let life, or busyness, or weariness, or depression, keep me from daily engaging my children in active learning, from connecting with them and creating relationship with them, and from ensuring that they create good habits of self-discipline.

I have started to work daily with J(almost 5) and A(3). Not an easy thing because J loves to whine and complain whenever I ask him to do anything, and A is so active and distracted. We are learning to print with Handwriting Without Tears, I love the short fun lessons. A totally loves working on the slate and is excited to successfully print her 'leapfrog' letters. F and E so far. This curriculum starts with the capitol letters because they are the easiest and natural for kids to print. HWT really stresses creating good habits from the start, proper posture, holding the pencil correctly, paper positioning etc. She suggests using small pieces of crayon and chalk to start, as they almost force proper grasp.

This week we have been doing a fun math activity. I drew two circles on a piece of paper and put a plus sign between them. Each kid has a pile of raisins or beans or something and two dice. They roll the dice and then put the amount of one dice in one circle and the other dice in the other circle. Roll a 1 and a 2, put 1 raisin in one circle and 2 raisins in the other circle. Then they count them to do the addition. 1 + 2 = 3. J asked me the first time, "Mom, can we eat them up to erase!?!" I told them to go ahead. Now they adore this activity and keep asking for it.

I am also using An Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading by Jessie Wise with A. J is totally reading now, at a grade 1 or 2 level is my guess. This book is designed to be used with kids from about 3 and up, so we are giving it a go with A. We did the first lesson, short vowel a, yesterday and today and then we read the short vowel a Bob books together. Again, quick easy lessons and I am sure they will help the process along. I will be going over some of the lessons with J as we progress, to make sure he has a good grasp of all the phonetics.

The bigger boys are starting to get into a rhythm. Math, handwriting, writing in the mornings, along with spelling or vocab lessons. Biology and Canadian History in the afternoons. We started two experiments today.

I have been remembering to take breaks either at meal time or over a smoothie or tea and do our bible reading, then trying to get the kids to do narration from that and other reading or music. We have been reading Proverbs, but today we read in Daniel. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. B and R decided to act out the story while I read, it was hilarious and got the littles really interested.

We had our facilitator meeting this week and he, as usual, made me feel better about everything. We talked a lot about high school and I found out that B is 1 year ahead in math and will be in science too. Phew! In all I feel pretty good about everything, I was freaking out about all the stuff I can't seem to get done, but now I feel much more peaceful.

2008-10-20T19:30:00.002-06:00

Things are going alright. This week is off to a much better start than last one ended. I was getting tired of the all day dawdle that R is famous for. Today we all 5 sat down at the table with E watching from a baby chair. I gave B(13) and R(11) a handwriting lesson and this interested J(4) and A(3). While the bigger boys moved on to Writing Strands, J taught A and I some prehandwriting skills. We took out the Handwriting Without Tears (HWT) shapes, J lead us in some exercises from my teacher's manual. He was showing off his reading skills. Then instead of letting mom do a lesson with him, he sat and followed the instructions in my book and wrote out the entire uppercase alphabet. A did a bunch of A's and doodling on her own.
I then pulled out some counting/number writing sheets I had downloaded and J did those. When he was done, he still wanted to do more writing so we did the b pages in Get Ready for the Code book A. This introduces the letter sounds, letter recognition, printing etc. He loves to do those worksheets, I think he did 10 or 12 pages.
The big boys did their math and were done by noon.
Instead of moving on to Social Studies and Science, we went to the rec centre this afternoon. The big guys went swimming and I took the little people to the indoor playground. Thankfully there were lots of kids to keep them occupied. It was a really nice day, no fighting, no frustration. We need to have many more days like that!

2008-10-08T16:02:00.005-06:00

Today the boys got up early with dad and got a head start on their math. Yay! The littlest 3 and I went to chat and play at the church while the big guys worked on school. Not ideal for getting school done, but much needed for me and the preschoolers.

Social Studies:
B and R have been watching the Canada: A People's History videos. We are on episode 2 this week, it goes up to about 1670 and talks about the fur trade and New France, the life of Samuel de Champlain, etc. They are working together to write a 6 scene play about the fur trade and have chosen to follow the voyage of a beaver pelt through 6 interactions between different people involved. With a little prompting, their first 2 scenes look like a terrific start. B(13) wrote a scene where a native father is teaching his son how to catch a beaver and R(11) wrote the scene where they take the pelt to the trading post.
We are using various other resources: books from the Discovering Canada series, such as New France and The Fur Trade; Kids Can Press books such as The Kids Book of Canadian History and the Kids book of Canadian Exploration; Donna Ward's Courage and Conquest and various websites and other books.
As for the preschoolers, I read to them about beavers from the Fur Trade book. Of course A (3) has many more questions to ask than ears to listen.

Science:
Body Worlds is still playing at our Science Centre this week and I am still hoping Daddy will have time to take the older kids. I am kind of grossed out by it, so I don't want to take them. In preparation, we have been studying a bit about the human body using Lyrical Life Science 3: the Human Body as our base. The kids all enjoy the songs.
We are supplementing our reading with various Usborne books, websites and a life size skeleton model I am having the boys put together. I pulled out the Grey's Anatomy to help them label some bones not already labeled.
I am still trying to find our Science curriculum cd-rom, the boys have managed to misplace it since spring and I am frustrated with that. $75 and a month of time wasted because we can't find it. When we do, we will skip ahead to the human body section for now and then go back to earth science.
With the preschoolers today, I read the muscles pages of The Usborne First Encyclopedia of the Human Body and then we went the the linked websites and played some games.

Language arts:
Both boys are using Writing Strands this year, supplemented with weeks of Dictation exercises, Spelling workout for R(11) and Vocabulary from Classical Roots for B(13) and yet to be named grammar programs. We should be starting the Latin Road to English Grammar again soon.
B is on WS 4 lesson 5 this week and R is WS 3 lesson 3 as well as doing the dictation exercises that he only said he did last week.
The littles made an emergent reader booklet today of the Eensy Weensy Spider today and recited that with me a few times. This promotes fluency and success in reading for beginning and pre-readers. J (4) is actually reading quite well already, I literally cried last week when he read a passage from the Human Body encyclopedia. I couldn't believe how well he was reading.
The preschoolers also did a bit of cutting practice today.

Math:
Saxon Algebra 1/2 for B(13) and 6/5 for R(11) this year, continuing from the spring. B is on lesson 20 and R is on lesson (43)

Logic:
B has started a formal logic program this year by way of Introductory Logic. We are also using Critical Thinking Co.'s Mind Bender's cd-roms and Red Herring stories with both boys as fun add-ons.

Latin and French:
We haven't attempted to start these subjects yet this year. French should be easy to add in, but I have to get ahead of the kids in Latin before starting again, and with a newborn I can't even think about it now.

Cooking!
I have been lax in formal elective instruction, but both boys have shown such an interest in cooking that I am going to consider this one of our electives this year.
So far this year R has made a curry - Butter Chicken and Naan bread which was his first yeast bread. He also had to clarify butter for the naan bread.
Both boys have made pancakes and cookies, grilled cheese and ... I can't remember! I will have to keep track of their experiments and successes in the kitchen as well as cover meal planning, shopping with a budget, substitutions, conversions, tools and terms, various skills and maybe even thematic menus.... should be fun.

I need to have both boys pick passages for memory work, I keep forgetting to do that...

I had planned on taking all of September off school. E was born on September 9th and I knew I would be tired and overwhelmed and just not up to keeping up with the boys. Brent decided that when he went back to work that the boys should be doing something so he set them up and took care of making sure they did what he assigned and marked. He was right, but it has been hard many days. By the end of the first week, I took over the planning, but he has been checking in with them most nights.
When R started his usual taking all day to finish a 30 minute math lesson, Brent started waking him up at 6 am the next day to work with R before going to work. This seems to be helping so far. I am trying to stay on top of everything and them each day. I plan out our schedules with my Homeschool Tracker software, print out their weekly assignment sheets so they know what is expected each day and then try to check their work and enter it into the software as done and their marks.
I got behind last week, so this week I am playing catch up. I discovered that R hadn't done his dictation exercises last week, so he has double writing assignments this week. B had some difficulties with his vocab assignments, so he is doing catch up and corrections this week. I feel good about where we are heading this year, but frustrated with monetary constraints that are preventing me from buying some much needed and some just much wanted supplies and curriculum. Like Braeden's science. Time is limited and he really does need to complete his science this year to stay on track for college. I guess I need to pray for God's provision! Hmm, maybe the school board would be able to order it for me... I have some phone calls to make.

My favourite kind of school day.

2008-06-07T20:12:00.002-06:00

paper and elements: Weeds and Wildflowers, Believing In You
measuring tape, paper star: Weeds and Wildflowers, Seeing Stars
splash: Weeds and Wildflowers, Juicy Fruit freebie
frames: Vera Lim, All Negatives
Fonts: Black Widow, Gigi

My brain's around here somewhere...

2008-05-27T15:14:00.002-06:00

Alrighty then....
It has been a while since I posted over here. That is mostly because I have been busy teaching school, actually teaching for a change. And this baby making is taking all of my excess energy and apparently continuing the tradition of zapping my brain cells left, right and centre.
I have been continuing my use of a weekly schedule for the boys, broken down by subject and day. It has been quite helpful to all of us to know what we should be doing as well as keeping track of our progress. Even better, when daddy was off of work last week he was able to do much of the learning facilitation in our house. Yay for me!
Today is not a great day, I gave up around 1pm. I told them to eat lunch and then ignored the fact that instead of returning to their schoolwork that should have been done before noon, they went outside to play. (wow, that was a long sentence!)
I could hear all four of them out in the yard, playing, laughing, having fun and I made an executive decision. To let sunshine and laughter feed their souls for a few hours, rather than to continue being a nagging mother who was stealing their joy and sparkle.
Plus, Daddy said that he would make sure they got their school work done tonight if they continued giving me a hard time. A beautiful out for me!

I have taken the list thing a bit farther than just our weekly checklist. I am finding the constant nagging I seem to do, utterly exhausting and ineffective. Last week, I must have repeated the same instructions to my eldest about his math about 8000 times and he was still ignoring me. I started furiously typing on my laptop. I wrote out step by step instructions on how I wanted him to complete his math lessons. Same thing with cleaning the kitchen. They come out yelling, "I'm Done!"
So I question them. "Have you put the food away?"
"Um, let me go check..."
45 seconds pass
"I'm done!"
"Is the table cleared and wiped?"
"Um... let me go check..."
90 seconds later
"MOM! I'm done, can I play Guitar Hero?"
"Did you wipe the table?"
"Oops, I will be right back."

And on and on it goes for 45 minutes at least. Sometimes it will be 20 minutes between the 'I'm dones' and then they won't have actually done anything in the meantime. I am so sick and tired of it.
So I wrote the 'I'm Done' kitchen checklist. It is extremely detailed, step by excruciatingly small baby step. I guess we will see how that works. I am hoping that at the very least it will cut down on the screams of, 'I'm Done!'
I am now working on detailed instructions for all the other jobs around here as well as all of the school tasks I require of them. I am hoping they will help, but I am sure that I am delusional.

2008-04-17T15:04:00.003-06:00

I am reading Ruth Beechick's You Can Teach Your Child Successfully. I found it again while looking for her guides to teaching younger children, I was successful in finding the language and math volumes,but I am still on the hunt for A Home Start in Reading which I wanted to reference in my teaching of my 4 year old.
I am regretful that I did not take the time to read You Can Teach Your Child Successfully when I received it 3 or 4 years ago. It is geared to the teaching of children in the upper Grammar and Logic stages, grades 4-8, and is filled with practical advice on whole learning. It is geared to help parents become well-informed teachers of their children. I am only 20 pages in and she has already touched on stages of reading, what we can learn from standardized tests, how to decode school/teacher vocabulary and now I am reading about different types of reading.
In skimming it this morning, I found some writing lessons and we started one of them today based on a copywork/dictation passage.
I am finally taking the time to educate myself about education rather than trying to rely upon curriculum and assignments to cover things. I have always been so eager to jump into stuff that I don't take the time to really learn and plan. I guess late is better than never.

Go check out my friend Lori's blog to glean some great insights into writing. I find her writings so inspirational, I always want to aspire to better things after I visit.

2008-04-16T13:01:00.002-06:00

Today was our end of the year facilitator visit. Since we have been with the Wisdom school board, these visits go swimmingly. He is wonderfully encouraging and seems genuinely interested in my children and who they are. And that they are succeeding in their endeavors. We had a terrific chat about Classical education and I feel even more that I am heading in the right direction now. The paperwork seems unimportant compared to my children's character.
I think I will call the board and register B. in one of their Socratic dialogue classes. They are doing one about the Second World War next year that I am sure he will love.
I am still not sure if I will buy a packaged curriculum for next year, like Tapestry of Grace or Sonlight, or if I will just take some reading lists and use the Classical methods to cover our history etc. I love the idea of the curriculum, because it is already laid out for me. But I am worried about feeling bogged down by it and letting curriculum run our schooling rather doing what I think is working or going where I think we are being led naturally.

Week's end.

2008-04-11T23:17:00.003-06:00

A very successful week here in the Mighty home school. R and I did math together all week and it went swimmingly. 20 minutes per lesson tops, it is a record for sure!

Surprisingly to me, the kids are loving the Latin. Of course, they do love to learn new things and this is still new and fresh. R seems to have a real talent for picking up the pronunciations, he is already correcting the rest of us. I need to work on my Latin this weekend or the boys will be ahead of me by next week.

I am wondering if I should take a break from the French for a couple of months so as to not confuse them as we get used to the Latin. Plus, my computer where the student database is stored has crashed so all our records are gone. This means the kids have to start over at lesson 1! That sucks for all of us. My dad is going to help me recover some of the data on that computer so I am hoping to salvage their records.

I am so pleased with myself this week, I think I succeeded in starting some new, healthy habits for all of us. Now to keep up the commitment on my part and help the boys make lifelong habits of working hard, doing their best and learning to be self-motivated, but accountable.

I am also pleased with the kids, no fighting about school for a whole week. Today at lunch, I told the kids to get their shoes on, I was taking them for a treat and then to a friend's to play. B wasn't done his math yet and I yelled out the back door for him to grab his books to take. He already had them and was waiting outside with them. Woohoo! That is an absolute first. He took responsibility for his own education. That is what I am reaching for!

I am so looking forward to this weekend. We will take it off and for once I feel that it is well deserved.

2008-04-09T16:15:00.001-06:00

Midweek checkup
Our first week of back to academics and Mama totally engaging with the boys and their school. Unfortunately over the last couple of years I have gotten into the habit of giving them assignments and then waiting for them to finish them. This has been increasingly frustrating as they weren't all that motivated to actually finish their assignments.

God has really been speaking to me about this. I had been seeking his path as to how to school the high school years with B. I spent last week during spring break, reading the Well Trained Mind. Wow, I felt God speaking to me about my role in their education and realized all the gaps I have left. I felt totally energized, inspired, and convicted. I feel that I have some direction for the next few years and am working at putting it into action.

I have some much needed supplies on my list of things to buy, but for now we are working with what we have.

This week
Math
R.: We have been just doing a simple workbook this year, but he has some glaring gaps, so today we started Saxon 6/5. This curriculum has been rather painful for us in the past, but that is what we have so that is what we are doing for now. I am on the search for another program though.
To ease the pain, I went through the entire lesson with him, we did most of the practice questions aloud and made sure he understood. Then he did just over half of the lesson practice with me sitting beside him and doing the last six questions independently. This worked perfectly. 15 minutes and we were done. Much less painful than him sitting for hours staring into space.
B did his seventh investigation, and again, I went over trouble spots with him and he did well. Once we both figured out what the reciprocal coefficient of x was.

Language arts/Latin:
I finally got around to starting the Latin Road to English grammar last weekend, so this week we have done the first 3 lessons. Today we got to practice the Lord's Prayer in Latin. The kids were totally geeked up about it.
In spelling, though we have been using Spelling Power, both boys had to study spelling lists today. R needed review and B was doing the postal abbreviations for the States and Provinces. Yeah, he had no idea about most of them. I always forget that they need to know the American stuff as well as the Canadian.

B is almost done level G in spelling and R is in the middle of level C, he has had a rough time with spelling until this year, but it seems to be getting better now.

Dictation is something I have decided to start again, what better way to become a great writer than to copy great writers?! B did a passage from King Solomon's Mines and R did one from On the Banks of Plum Creek by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

Writing has been blogging so far this week, but we will soon be starting a formal composition curriculum. We are also doing a mini-report for Bible study this week. We are using the NIV Children's Bible Handbook and are working in the New Testament section.
The boys are both reading what they like and we are going through Mark in our daily Bible reading

Social Studies: We are working through Geography Province by Province by Donna Ward and will soon be starting Conquerers and Conquests by the same Author as well as dozens of supplementary books and historical fiction to go with it. This week we learned about Forestry as well as people and places in BC and will learn about the symbols and economy of AB. We map as well as plot figures and events on our timeline.

French: still plodding through Rosetta Stone, I would like to find a written French program as a supplement though.

Science: Hasn't happened yet this week, hopefully tomorrow afternoon we can continue with our program.

Preschool!
J(4) and I worked on some phonics exercises today, til he got bored and then he did some reading. With A (2.5) we played Discovery Toys match game and they played with alphabet blocks and cars for hours. We also read dozens of books.

2008-04-08T07:57:00.000-06:00

We are starting to ease into some new scheduling and a more rigorous academic education for the boys. The first day went typically. R spent the entire day, hours and hours staring at his page of math, doing entirely nothing. I went over how to do the questions with him to no avail. I did do his spelling with him and he worked on his geography.
B did a bit better, he got off to a slow start, but he managed to finish his math, geography, dictation, spelling, and.
J, 4, is such a keener, he is aching to learn. We spent a good half hour yesterday writing out rhyming words. He came up with a word, such as can or cat and we looked through the alphabet trying out new letters at the beginning to make rhyming words. He sounded them all out to see if they worked. Afterwards he wanted to read a book, so we took the first couple phonetic readers out and we sounded them out together. He is still missing a few sounds and doesn't always grasp the sounding out concept. He is really good at looking for picture clues. One of the stories said something about 'sat on a hat' and the picture showed the character sitting on a bench, so I kept trying to get him to sound out hat with me, but he kept wanting to say bench or seat. He did figure it out though, it was really fun to watch him discover and learn.
While waiting for dinner, he had gotten out a printing book and he must have worked in it for half an hour at least, completely self-directed. He hates to hold the pencil properly, but we are working on it.
Today we are going to set up some new binders with dividers, especially for the Latin Road to English Grammar which we will start today. Should be interesting.

Home Education Week

2008-04-05T23:10:00.003-06:00

Scroll down for my posts for the week.

Found this list over on Tons of Sons of things to think and write about during this week, Home Education Week at Principled Discovery.

Looking Back Sunday, March 30

Share your personal history…before you were a home educator. What was life like? Think about things you miss and things you and your family have gained.

Profiling Home Educators Monday, March 31

Describe yourself, your family or one of your children. What is it like to be home educated in your family? What is “normal” for you?

April Fool’s! Tuesday, April 1

And we have likely all felt the fool in one way or another. Share your greatest challenge. Or one of those terrible, horrible no good, very bad days where the only thing there is to do seems to involve moving to Australia.

Recipe for Success Wednesday, April 2

It is also National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day! So share a recipe…figuratively, as in two parts love, one part creativity, or literally, as in a super quick, nutritious meal your kids scarf up. Think about what you do in the day, what helps keep it organized and you sane (or how you got past that need for organization and saneness!), and curriculum materials you find effective.

Show and Tell Thursday, April 3

Show off those talents. Share a story, a special moment, a piece of artwork. Any accomplishment, great or small, is fair game.

In Their Own Words Friday, April 4

Share your children’s home education experience in their own words. What have they said about their education? What are their likes and dislikes? Share some stories, some quotes, or turn your blog over to your children for the day.

Looking Forward Saturday, April 5

What are your goals for home education? What do you hope to instill in your children? Are you planning any changes to how you educate your children?

Show and Tell

2008-04-03T21:05:00.001-06:00

Show and Tell

Thursday, April 3

Getting my boys to enjoy writing has been a goal of mine since we started. My second son absolutely hated to write and it was pure torture to even get 5 sentences out of him last year in grade 4. My elder son thought writing was okay, but not his fave thing to do. They both have these amazing imaginations and it seemed like such a waste to me that we wouldn't have many records of all that goes on in their brains.
In the fall I had them each start a blog. Well, it wasn't long til they begged to write in their blogs every day. I finally saw the lightbulbs go off in their heads. Writing didn't have to be a chore. It was a way of recording what was in their hearts and minds. It could be fun!
They thought it was so fun, that when I decided to do NaNoWriMo in November and write a novel, they decided to join me. They both wrote more than they had ever done in their entire lives. And they were so proud of their accomplishments and so am I.

Recipe for Success

2008-04-02T10:02:00.005-06:00

Recipe for Success

Wednesday, April 2

I don't think I really have found my recipe for success yet, as I shared in yesterday's post. So today I will share a recipe or 2. One thing that really works for me, when I actually get around to it, is meal planning. I have some wonderful cookbooks with meal plans and shopping lists already set out week by week. LOVE! The series is called Cooking for the Rushed and the recipes are easy, coded by speed of prep and cooking, and delicious. Even my pickiest eater has eaten everything I have made from them.

One of my favourite, stand-by recipes, not from these cookbooks, is Cajun Chicken Fettuccine. My mom makes it fairly often and it is quick and easy. I don't actually have a recipe that I follow, I kind of make it up as I go along, but I will try my best to write it out for you.

Cajun Chicken Fettuccine

4 to 5 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 cups of mushrooms
half an onion
half a bulb of garlic
Cajun seasoning to taste
1 box of fettuccine pasta
couple of tbsp. of butter
2 to 4 tbsp. flour
2 to 3 cups of milk
1 cup of chicken broth
1/3 c. parmesan cheese

1. Warm some olive oil in a deep frying pan and add 3 cloves of crushed garlic and chopped onion.
2. Slice up the chicken and add to the pan, brown it.
3. Wash and slice the mushrooms, add to pan while chicken finishes cooking, sprinkle everything with desired amount of Cajun seasoning.
4. Put pot of water on to boil for your pasta.
5. When chicken is cooked, remove to bowl and set aside.
6. Cook pasta
7. Add butter to pan, melt (I always add a couple more cloves of crushed garlic here) and then add flour to make roux. Add milk and chicken broth, bit by bit to roux, whisking it in as you go to thicken sauce. Cook until desired consistency.
8. At this point you can add more Cajun seasoning if you like, and then put the chicken and mushrooms back in the sauce to warm. Add Parmesan cheese and stir til melted through.
9. Add sauce to drained pasta and mix through. Serve with salad for a complete meal.
This is delicious and quick and all my kids eat it!
Enjoy.

My recipe amounts are all approximations, if you have any questions, please email me. mightymorphinmama [at] gmail [dot] com

April Fool's

2008-04-01T22:42:00.003-06:00

April Fool’s!

Tuesday, April 1

Well I think I feel the fool more often than not, especially in regards to home educating. I remember the first year we tried it. I kept telling my facilitator that I had no idea what I was doing, where do I start? She just kind of laughed and told me that I was their mother, I was intelligent and I would do just fine.
I am not sure if she was misguided or not. I often feel like I am without a rudder in this ocean and I allow myself to be blown about by circumstance and things that seem like a great idea, far too often. I have wonderful plans and ideas, but life keeps getting in the way. Babies and toddlers and sports and chores and things I want to do for me. Never mind the discouragement of non-compliant children and my own emotional ups and downs.
I think, for me, one of my biggest challenges is staying plugged-in and engaged in my kid's education. I get discouraged when they won't sit and work on what I have assigned them. I sometimes feel as though I spend my days yelling and begging them to just finish their math! Sometimes I just retreat to my room for a afternoon, or a day or 2 and read my books or my blogs and I feel like curling up in my bed and giving up. For good.
I am at a crossroads right now. Things have got to change. I am either going to completely plug into a classical education program for the boys, which is my dream and my preference. Or I am going to hand off their education, either to a correspondence or computer type curriculum, self teaching and marking; or put them into school.
I just can't continue floating about, without oars or rudder, hoping everything will work out. I need direction, as do the children and I would really like to teach them lifelong skills like thinking! My goal is to raise God-serving, intelligent, thinking, children who are pursuing their dreams, so I need to find the best path to get there.

Profiling Home Educators

2008-03-31T20:17:00.003-06:00

Profiling Home Educators

Monday, March 31

I am a fairly young mom who will be 33 in a couple of weeks, I have been married since I was 19 to the same man;) We have 6 children. 3 boys aged 13, 10, and 4. One daughter who was stillborn almost 6 years ago and 1 living daughter who is 2.5. We are expecting number six at the beginning of September.
I met my husband in Bible college and we were married within the year. We have lived in northern BC and all over Alberta. I have traveled to a few European countries as well as to Guatemala, the Bahamas and the western United States.
I love to write, love to read even more and I adore digital scrapbooking. It fulfills my need for artistic pursuits as well as documents our life as a family.
When we started our home educating journey, 5 years ago, I really had no idea what to expect and it seems that we are always making it up as we go along. We tend to try to get our book work done in the mornings, but it is always an adventure with 2 preschoolers running around and climbing on the boys backs.
I think our favorite times are field trips and afternoons with friends. We are starting to incorporate a tea time which has been a lot of fun and a needed break from mom nagging and kids slacking. We read books and check out interesting things on the internet. I would love to add some art appreciation to this time and we have already added music.
We are Christians, so that really affects our home education. We all love to start our day with bible reading and prayer. The boys love to pick their own passages to read and are always eager to do some memorization. I am loving this opportunity to fill their hearts with the things of God.
The little kids are often a big distraction but they are learning so much from their brothers and their brothers are learning patience and problem solving and tons of valuable people skills. I am so proud of my children's sibling relationships, they are all very close and I wonder if that would be so if they all went their own ways each day.

Home Education Week: Looking Back

2008-03-30T00:16:00.002-06:00

Looking Back Sunday, March 30

Well before I was a mother, I was a student. Before I was a home educator, I was seriously considering becoming a student again. We had 2 boys in kindergarten and grade 3 in our local public school. I spent most of that year in my boys' school, in their classrooms and in the library volunteering. I helped 3 grade 3 boys with severe literacy issues, shelved books in the library and hung out with the 5 year olds. It was a ton of fun and kept me busy.

Every day, someone would tell me that I should either go back to school and get my teaching degree or take some courses and get a job as an aide in the school. I did not want to be a teacher. At all.

I enjoyed the daily interactions with the other parents and teachers. I hung out on the playground after kindy and made a big effort to befriend other moms. Sunny days were the best, there were always lots of us watching the kids and commiserating about our parenting experiences.

I had been working the year before at the gym, but it was in our old neighbourhood and I decided it was too big a deal to go that far anymore.
One thing we didn't have a lot of time for was socializing with our best friends, our weeks were packed. And my dh was often out of town, so our evenings and weekends were often lonely.

I had always considered homeschooling as a possibility. I had felt that when B went to grade one, I should have pulled him out of school. He was already growing bored in the classroom, though he thrived on the social aspects. By grade three, he had become a bit sullen and had an attitude about school. It wasn't worth his effort anymore, he figured. He had experienced some bullying the years previous and I am sure that contributed to his attitude.

R loved kindergarten, though the idea of it and the first couple months caused a nervous habit that he has kept to this day. Nail biting. ick.

My best friend was a home educator already and she worked on me for months, we wanted more time to hang out! She told me about all the cool activities her kids were involved with, I was jealous. When spring came and I found out I was pregnant, it seemed like the perfect time to start. I wasn't going to be going back to university if I had a new baby, so we decided to start home educating that fall.

That first year was wonderful. I loved the freedom. We got to spend our days doing what we liked. We had activities with home school friends 2 days a week and did schooly stuff 2 or 3 mornings a week. We got to hang out with our bestest friends 3 or 4 days a week. In the spring when my husband had to go up north to work, we all went with him. Freedom!
After Christmas, when we had our new baby, we were able to take things easy and not bundle him up every morning to take the boys to class. We did what we were able to, without a lot of pressure or worry.

When we decided it was time to move to a different city, I have to say there were things that I really missed about my kids being in school. I missed the daily opportunities for adult interactions. I was very lonely. It took me a long time to become connected in our new town. I still haven't gotten hugely involved in the home educating community here, but I do have a small core of friends.

I also felt bad that the boys didn't have that school environment to meet new kids. Luckily there are some boys in our cul-de-sac that they immediately made a connections to. Unfortunately they don't see much of them in the winter months as everyone is in school and activities.
The last few years I have often felt that the academics were suffering as we kept adding to our family. We now have a 4 year old and a 2.5 year old, so things are getting easier, just in time to welcome our next bundle in September. Yikes!

Although there are ups and downs, and I feel like a failure as a home educator more often than not, I wouldn't trade our life now for anything. I love having my children in my home. I love that they have retained so much innocence and child-likeness for so much longer than many of their peers. I am glad that they have so little awareness of so many things that are so important to others their age. Like fashion and coolness and being 'in'. I am so thankful that they are best friends who care about each other and look out for each other and are terrific older siblings.
I love that we can pick up and go whenever we like, without having to worry about 'school'. We get to go to the pool and zoo and wherever else we like, when there are no crowds.

And I know my kids. I don't have to send them off each day, not knowing what they are doing and what has been said to them. I may not have a lot of free time on my hands, I may miss my quiet mornings on my own, but I have my kids in my heart and my home. My house may be a mess, but I now know myself better than ever and have real hobbies and interests of my own to pursue. Like blogging;)

2008-03-28T11:44:00.003-06:00

Apparently my boys LOVE poetry. Love! I gave them an assignment to pick out a poem to memorize and present next Thursday. Last night they kept running into my room to tell me about the poems they were picking. At one point, R. had 3 poems pretty much memorized already and kept coming to tell me them.
Not only do they love to read poems, they love to write them. Their journals for the last few weeks have been full of poetry. It is kind of funny because I have never formally taught them poetry. When they show an interest in a type of poetry I will explain it. Like on St Patty's I told them the rhyme scheme of Limericks. They have done a ton of Haiku, but for the most part they do free verse and couplets. And they are happy as clams. I need to keep out of it for them to love it, it seems.

Today's freewrite topic was to describe a ride in an airplane. My bloodthirsty boys both decided to write about plane crashes instead. They are quite into that idea! I am interested to see how much mayhem they can create in one story.

Thursday teatime

2008-03-27T14:58:00.005-06:00

We did our first official tea time today. Other than some wrestling between the 13 year old and the 4 year old, it went well.
We started off reading The Royal Canadian Mounted Police by Marc Tetro. It is a picture book for 4-8 year olds I would think and has amusing drawings that all the kids enjoyed. Then we started The Jungle Book, an illustrated one that I bought years ago and never read. All 3 boys seemed to be really into it and the older style of writing doesn't seem to be an issue. We stopped at page 26, just after the wolves accept Mowgli as part of the pack.
The children then each chose a poem from Favorite Poems Old and New selected by Helen Ferris to read and I read Written in March by William Wordsworth. I gave the older boys an assignment to pick a poem to memorize for next week.
Monkey Boy and I did some Hershey Kisses Math before the big boys joined us, Monkey's choice. It is a multiplication and division book, but he was really into it and seemed to at least grasp the basics of the multiplication part. I would like to find a similar addition book.
Next we opened the laptop and went to the Classics for Kids website where we listened to 4 shows about Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the composer of the Flight of the Bumblebee. I think next time we will just do one show, even though they are just 6 minutes long, we were all restless by the end.
We headed on over to News Flash Five, a news for kids site I found on PBS. I am gonna go through some of the lesson plans and maybe incorporate some of them into our weeks.
I thought we would spend some time looking at some art books, but we were all tired of sitting by then and I gave the kids their poetry assignment and told them that they could actually have their computers back today to blog. I can't wait to read them, I have missed their blogging.
Oh, biggest brother read a really cute version of There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly and Monkey has been reciting it all day.

I can't wait to try this again next week. It is nice to just relax together, read and talk.
If anyone has some good art appreciation websites, would you please share?

2008-03-14T13:06:00.003-06:00

I have been feeling uninspired and overwhelmed both as a teacher and as a mother. Today I decided to do something about it.
I actually sat with the children while they ate breakfast today and then I stayed at the table with them for the whole morning. We did our bible reading together and prayed, really prayed. I wrote down our prayer list on the calendar so we would have a visual reminder. I had each child at least make a prayer of thanksgiving if nothing else. I had fallen out of these habits and allowed myself to be lazy and selfish, spending more and more time doing my own things during the school day and less time with the boys.
The boys then did their math and spelling and are now completing their English smart and limericks, R will do his science and social worksheets too. I just caught R with his hand in the back of the workbook holding the answer page, so I cut out the answer keys. ugh.
I have discovered that R really responds well to worksheets. I have tried so hard to stay away from worksheets, but he really loves the feeling of accomplishment he gets by finishing them. I may have to look at ACE for next year for him and maybe supplimenting unit studies with tons of books like my bff does. B is the one I am really concerned about, we need to make decisions about high school for him and I feel a bit overwhelmed by the options and the future. Praying for God's guidance.
I think I will run downstairs and get Juju' kindy stuff and organize it so that he and I can work together while I supervise the others. The 2 little guys are very distracting to the older ones with all the running around and yelling! I am also gonna make some more play dough, it is a great distraction for half an hour. A also loves to paint so I need to make a real effort to do those things with them on school mornings. Oh! And reading aloud for when the bigger boys don't need my help.
I would like to read all of the children The Jungle Book and Alice in Wonderland in the next couple of months. I have actually never read them myself and I think we can all enjoy them. We will also be concentrating on poetry during our tea-times. Fun!
Because the boys neglected their school and household chores this week, we need to do school tomorrow. I don't imagine that will go over well.
Lots of extra-curriculars happening around here. We went to the zoo on the weekend with my sister and niece, it was interesting to see the animals starting to shed their winter coats and others still pure white like the arctic timber wolves. So beautiful. We discovered that camels grow a very shaggy, thick coat in winter and it is falling off in clumps now. Spring and fall are my favourite times to visit the zoo. The animals are much more active than in the heat of summer. Of course you run the risk of being a voyeur to animal mating in spring. I can't tell you how many times we had to explain to our very small children that no the daddy lion was not hurting the lady lions... I do think that animal reproduction and mortality are wonderful ways of broaching those subjects with children. It is so matter-of-fact and easy to see from a scientific viewpoint.
On Wed. the boys both had bible study and we had a homeschool get-together with 4 other families. The mommy's try to learn a bit and share, while the kids play together. There could be up to 23 kids (so far I think the most we have had was 15) ranging in age from my youngest at 2 to my oldest at 13 and 3-5 girls and the rest are boys. For all that energy, we barely hear from them and there are surprisingly few altercations.
Both boys are going to be testing for their green belts at approximately their 1 year anniversary of taekwondo. I am so proud of them, they have worked very hard at it. They also are both in hockey playoffs and tournaments from now into April. So lots going on here.

Home Education Outlawed in California???

2008-03-10T21:24:00.002-06:00

I am absolutely appalled that these judges in California are taking away parents rights to teach their own children, to decide what is right for their own children.
Check out this Dr. Dobson episode for all the details.

Not much has changed.

2008-03-04T10:31:00.002-07:00

Wow, I can't believe that I have neglected writing here for so long. There is not a lot to tell. I am still feeling frustrated often with my children's lack of motivation and drive. I don't get it. But I do know that I need to make more of an effort to be completely present to them as opposed to being distracted with other things. Like blogging:)
A girlfriend gave me an idea last week that she has started with her kids. If they do not finish their book work by noon they have to pay a fine. I told my kids that the fine is $2. For each hour after that the fine is an additional dollar. Last week, in 2 days I collected $15 dollars. Not good. They seriously need to learn to just get down to business. We will see how this week goes. Either they will figure out how to use their time wisely or I will be going for a really nice dinner with my husband.
Here is a pic of my son blogging. It was my tricky way of getting them writing this year, they both really like it. Unfortunately I had to take away their computers after New Year's because they were cruising the internet when they were supposed to be blogging. ugh. Maybe we will be able to try it again by the end of this week.

Getting it off my chest

2008-02-13T09:24:00.002-07:00

Things have not been going so smoothly lately, the kids have once again become experts at procrastination and driving their mother batty. I just don't know how to handle their constantly sneaking off and their constant chatter and bickering. One morning I found myself sitting by them, repeating over and over, "Be quiet. Be quiet. I said be quiet. Stop fighting. I mean it. Be quiet. Stop talking. Stop talking. shut your mouths. please. Be quiet. SHUT UP!" I so wish I was kidding. They seriously sat for hours just chattering, bugging their siblings and accomplishing absolutely nothing. Even when I separated them it wasn't any better.
These are intelligent kids who are 10 and 13. You would think that they would figure out that if they just finish their assignments then they get to move on and do something else. Something fun maybe! And mommy won't yell. And they could do something else! Apparently that reasoning is beyond them.
Not entirely beyond them though. Today, R (10), is determined to finish his weeks worth of work, so 3 days worth in one day. Daddy told him that if he did that he could rent a video game. He got up at like 7 and did 3 French lessons and has now finished 3 math and 3 handwriting assignments. Yeah baby!
His older brother has yet to show his face. He is awake, but is still hiding in the bathroom. He has been giving me some major attitude lately. Last week he was p.o.'ed all day because I dared to give him a writing assignment. He figured he should just be able to write about whatever he wanted. (Which they often do) Another afternoon he was mad because I asked him to do a good copy of his report. How dare I? Obviously I don't ask for good copies near often enough. And actually I had required the good copy be finished the week before and had asked for it every day since and he was dragging his feet. So I wouldn't let him out of his chair util it was done. I am so mean.
Between them they missed 3 or 4 taekwondo classes last week because they were not finished their assignments by the time we needed to leave. I decided that there would be no more extra-curriculars until they started getting their school done. I am sick of waiting all day for a small amount of work to be done. It is ridiculous.
I am sure that being pregnant is not helping my attitude any, I think I have far less patience. I hate that. And I don't want school to mean fighting and yelling. I want them to love learning, which they do. They just don't want me to expect them to actually do anything. Which is not acceptable.

A Red Letter Day!

2008-01-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Woohoo!
It is noon and I am done teaching! I have been waiting for this day for months!
Math? check. Spelling? Check. Handwriting? check. Social Studies? check!!!! English? punctuation, check. journaling, check. Bible? check. French? one child done, the other has independent work to do.
Yay! The boys are working on mapping our neighbourhood and R has to do his French and then they are done. Unless of course I find my Science cd-rom soon and then I will make them do their pre-test and study. I hope I do find it, but I am looking forward to getting lunch done, have them do their chores quickly and booting their cute butts outdoors to enjoy the sun and snow.
Maybe we can make this home education thing work! Even with a new baby in the house.

2008-01-17T17:18:00.000-07:00

So we have a nice rhythm happening in our school days. Math, Spelling, Handwriting, French, journal/writing. And then.....
we get stalled.
We need to start our new Grammar program. We need to start our new Social Studies unit. We need to do our Science test and move on to the new chapter. We need to be doing more Bible memory work, we seem to have fallen out of the habit.
The reason we are stalled is because I haven't taken the proper steps in planning ahead. I have to get my but in gear. Find my Science test disk so that I can print out the pre-tests and tests. I need to do a week of the Grammar program ahead of them so that I can teach it. Yeah. Why did I think that the Latin Road to English Grammar was a good idea? I still do, I am just lazy about making time to do it. I have had the program sitting on my shelf for 2 years. I cut out and organized all the flash cards. I uploaded the audio to my iPod. And still it sits. Today, tonight even, I will do the first lesson. I think it will be fun! Don't you?
Oh and the flippin' library. I still haven't ordered my books for Canadian History. I hate the library. Hate. All I can think of while I am there or while I am reading a book from the library is germs. Of all the dirty hands that have touched the books. I realize many people love the library, I am just not one of them. If I could buy all of the books I need then I would gladly do that. I would go without lattes and food to buy the books. But sadly a great many of the books I need are not available for purchase. wah. So I need to bite the bullet tomorrow and leave my house and head to the library to buy my card. Once I have that, it is easy. I just go on my computer (joy!) and order my books.
Okay. I can do this.
Tonight: - Check over this week's math lessons
- Do first Latin/Grammar lesson
- Find my Science cd-rom and print tests
- Do a French lesson....
- Maybe work on my yearbook/scrapbook for last year...
Tomorrow: - Get past journaling on our list of school work
- GO TO THE LIBRARY!

I really can do this. I know I can.
Yep

Hockey Mom

2008-01-15T10:49:00.000-07:00

My boys are the sweetest. Yesterday when they were suppposed to be journaling they wrote letters to the local NHL team about why their Mom is the best hockey mom ever. They are going to enter them in a contest for cool prizes. Like family tickets to a hockey game as well as dinner and a limo ride.
Are they cute or what?
Did I mention that their dad put them up to it? I think he really wants to go to the game, but it is pretty sweet that he recognizes all I do to make sports possible for our kids. I am a pretty lucky Mom and wife!

Not so bad

2008-01-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

Well it did not go to badly yesterday. Our morning started with listening to the terrific New testament on CD I bought for Brent for Christmas. It is in the style of old Radio plays but true to the complete text of the New Testament. Awesome!
In school we started with math, as usual and that went well so we moved on to spelling. I have not taught spelling yet this year so we did the Spelling Power placement testing. I am very pleased with the results as R is one level ahead of where we left off and B is two levels ahead. Today we did the more specific tests and those were the final results. (R{10}is level C and B{13} is level G) We also managed to get in some handwriting, blogging/journaling and French. Not too bad for the first day back.
Today we started with our prayer and Bible reading: Ps. 1 and 2 & Matthew 10 & 11
I have finished the spelling placement and the boys are working on their math.
Science: We are finishing our reading for Module 3 and I need to print out the pre-test and tests for them. I love this module, we are learning about non-obvious variables, blind and double blind studies, graphing and interpreting results. Cool! I have decided to use science as exam taking practice. Easy choice considering that there are exams for each module. I am going to set them up formally to take these tests, this is not something we do very often, but I think it is important for them to know. They both plan on continuing their education, so they will need to know how to write an exam as well as how to study.
Handwriting: I have been using Handwriting Without Tears with R (10) and I have kind of let handwriting slide with the eldest. Today he decided to handwrite his spelling test. Big mistake. So I am doing some remedial handwriting with him using the same curriculum. I wish I had found it before he learned to handwrite because although he has some pretty letter formations, often the curly letters he writes are easy to mistake for other letters or letter combinations. Not so good.
Grammar/Punctuation: I will go over a page or two of The Usborne Guide to Better English. I hope.
Writing: 20 minutes of blogging
Geography: finishing off our unit on Canadian Geography

I need to get to the library and renew my card so that I can order all the books we need for our Canadian History unit.
I was flipping through a book I bought a year or two ago, The Usborne Guide to Better English: Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation. It is terrific! In five minutes of flipping I learned tons of things that I am doing wrong in my own writing. How embarrassing! It is a fun little resource and it even includes some activities and tests, so I think I will read it with the boys and we can do the activities. It is the least dry English book I have ever seen and it offers a very common sense approach to the subjects that makes so much sense to me. The book is British, so I am not sure how it would line up with the American standards of Grammar and spelling, but for us canuckleheads it works perfectly.

To begin again

2008-01-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

I am totally stressing about starting school again next week. I thought I would have all this planning and organizing time in December and I really had none. The weekend rush of sports and church is about to begin and I am completely unprepared for next week. All of our schedules are completely messed up and I know it is going to be a hard couple of weeks organizing and getting us all back on track.
Anyone have any tips?

Christmas Party

2007-12-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

We had our Christmas party last week at my good friend Dawn's. She is a gifted hostess, she has chosen to use her home to bless other Mom's who need fellowship with other women (as we all do!). She has sure blessed me with her and her family's friendship, my kids adore her's and we grownups get along pretty well too;)
So there are 4 families that get together every second week at Dawn's house. We bring goodies and chat while our kids play together. There are a lot of boys. I have 3, Dawn has 4, G. has 2 (plus 2 girls who are in school) and T has one 12 year old girl that hangs out with Dawn's 12 year old girl. The girls often entertain A. as well, which is awesome for me. With all the boys there is a lot of sword and gun play and a lot of running around outside. Lots of fun to be had.
Here are some pictures from our Christmas get-together, the kids had a fun gift exchange where they could open a new gift or take someone else's. I hate those games, but the kids enjoyed themselves.
Here are some photos I took, unfortunately no individuals of my big guys, but I think I got everyone else! Here are all the boys during the gift exchange. The frames on the others are by Angela Sharrow. Click on the images for full size views.

Disappointed Mommy wanted cake:(

2007-12-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

Oh darn! The Provincial Museum has free admission this weekend and free cake for those with December Birthdays! My Monkey boys birthday is December 31!!! I so wanted to take the kids there today. But we have spots. My girly has what look to me like chicken pox! She was vaccinated, but apparently her spots missed that memo. Oh well, I guess we will just have to pay to go to the museum later. I LOVE the museum! My kids fave parts are the dino and prehistoric exhibits and the Aboriginal peoples exhibit. Maybe next week. If no one else here gets spots!

What Tony Hawk Believes

2007-12-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

This is a terrific essay by Tony Hawk about doing what you love. I love where he talks about his careers teacher in school giving him heck for working ahead in his workbook. I don't know about you, but I am not interested in raising good little employees. I would like to raise children who love God, are self starter, free thinkers, life long learners and adults who follow the path they feel is right for them. No 'good employee' ever invented something wonderful and useful, or composed amazing music or created inspired artwork.
Not that you shouldn't do your very best at any job or occupation you are in, what I am talking about is being a person who just does what they are told and does not think for themselves, never thinks about finding a better or easier way of doing something, doesn't aspire to anything more in their lives.
Enjoy listening to this short essay with your children.

2007-12-05T23:42:00.000-07:00

Well we are taking the month of December off of bookwork. I need a break:)
I think we are all relieved that Nanowrimo is over and we are putting away our novels for now. I am so pleased that the boys seem to enjoy writing now, it is an answer to prayer. I look forward to reading their stories after Christmas, their imaginations astound me! Neither boy reached their word count goals, they did not even come close. But they attempted something huge! And I am proud of them for that. I think we will edit their stories and then I will put them into small hardcover books for them. And maybe I can convince them to give them away to relatives as well!
I am looking forward to diving into Canadian history after Christmas, I have to remember to order my books from the library and CHER. I plan on getting a ton of historical fiction as well, we all enjoy that. I may even try to pick up a bunch of the American History Adventures in Odyssey as well. The time periods will line up and it is great to know the American stuff as well. Plus Daddy loves it! I hope to find some big chunks of planning and organizing time this month. Planning for school and organizing the whole house including school stuff we aren't using right now.
Maybe I can get the kids to do some 'science' in the kitchen, I need some Christmas baking done!

2007-11-22T15:38:00.001-07:00

Today I actually sat down with the boys and read with them. It has been a really long time since I have done that, like at least not in the month of November. So we each read a chapter in the bible, we are going through the gospels in honour of the holiday season approaching. Then we each read a chapter in The World of Columbus and Sons. The kids and I totally love this history series by Genevieve Foster. It is linear history told in story form, looking at what was going on in the world during the life of certain historical figures. Augustus Caesar; Christopher Columbus; and George Washington. I want to pick up the George Washington one as we will be starting our Canadian History unit after Christmas.
I have given up having them work mostly on their novels this month, they were mostly fooling around on their computers and getting little writing done. So we were back on most of their regular studies. Math, Geography, French, writing/language arts... what am I missing... oh science, we had experiments to do today, but for some reason I am out of tissue! We need Kleenex for all 4 experiments. They are a series and the last 3 look to explain the results of the first. Cool!
I have gotten my housework back on track this week too, to my huge relief. I was feeling so overwhelmed by the tasks I was putting off to write, that I couldn't write at all. I am hoping in the next couple days to catch up on my writing, now that my bathrooms are sparkly and my laundry is folded.
Speaking of which, I really need to go switch the laundry now!

Homeschooler get-together

2007-11-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

Yikes, I haven't posted here in a week!
Today we had our first official homeschool day at the Servus Centre, the recreation centre that we regularily go to. I finally took the initiative and sent out an email to a couple of my homeschool groups and asked if people would be interested in getting together there for an afternoon. There is a regular get together of homeschoolers at another recreation centre in the area every Friday, but it is at least a half hour drive for me. And I hate the highway out there in the winter. Anyway, it was awesome! 5 or 6 other families attended with children ranging in age from 2 to 15. I met the most wonderful women, I can't wait to get to know them better. Most of them were around my age and all extremely friendly, and a number of them were Christians as well. Not that age and Faith matter, but it is always nice to have some common points of interest when beginning a new relationship.
Everyone decided that they would like to do it again, and we are going to meet up again next Monday.
Yay!
My social schedule is jam-packed this week, not sure where writing and school are going to fit in. We don't usually have a lot scheduled during school days, so I guess one week won't hurt us too much.

2007-11-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

This morning I walked up to my dh as he was making coffee and he put his arm around me and said, "Welcome to the crazy house."
I replied with a tired sigh, "Welcome to my everyday."
There was a huge Pokemon battle brewing in my kitchen, all three boys pretending to be different Pokemon complete with super loud sound effects and Pokemon battle moves. The noise level was deafening, the action a little disorientating.
"Of course," I added, "There is not always a Pokemon battle in my kitchen."
"Just think, if we weren't home educating, there might never be a poke battle in your kitchen," dh reminded me.
Tears started to fill my eyes as I watched the bunch of them having fun together, the older kids including the younger ones in their play. I am so thankful that I have this opportunity to watch them grow together and that they have this opportunity to know each other and teach each other. If they were in school I think it unlikely that they would be so willing to play with each other, their interests would be so diverse.

Catch-up

2007-11-08T12:40:00.000-07:00

I must have spent hours yesterday downloading and unzipping those children's recordings. Why could there not have been a nice torrent file available? There is a link on that page to another page that has old Disney recordings among many others and they are available in a torrent file that I will download as soon as I get some file sharing again.
My kids really enjoyed listening to stories all day as they avoided their schoolwork like the plague.
I decided that since they wasted Monday and Tuesday supposedly working on their novels all day, but not actually writing, that I was going to keep doing their regular school with them and let them write when they were done.
They are both behind in their word counts now. B is perfectly capable of reaching his and catching up by spending a few extra minutes here and there. But I am afraid of R, my reluctant writer who is 10, feeling overwhelmed and just giving up or being frustrated. It is really important to me that they have fun with the novel writing, I want writing to be enjoyable for them. I know that school took the fun out of writing for me. Especially the crappy high school English teachers I had, who taught us absolutely nothing. NOT A THING. The teacher I had for grades 9 and 10 was in the middle of a nervous breakdown, and came to class only very sporadically. His substitute let us watch videos most of the time. Often women's weight-lifting competitions. weird.
In grades 11 and 12 I had the drug-dealing, stoner teacher. I am not exaggerating in the least, he actually sold pot to students. He did not know any of the 20 students names, unless they partied with him. All we did was read aloud in his class and we had 3 essays to write which he randomly assigned a grade to, based on if he could put a face to your name or not. After handing in my second essay and receiving a C ( a mark I had never seen on a paper of mine before!) I refused to hand in anything else. I didn't think it was worth my time to let him grade my work. At the end of the school year he had us come to his desk and tell him what grade we deserved, so I said a B. I had never received lower than an A in English, but I figured with a C on my paper that wasn't gonna happen. He gave me a B, the lowest percentage B.
When I wrote my departmental exams I received honors and scholarship qualification, thanks to the excellent elementary school teaching I had received. Nothing on the exams had been taught to me in all of my high school career. but the basics were all there in the back of my head I guess.
anyways, after my experience in high school I decided I hated writing. And I do not want that for my kids. They have amazing imaginations and I want them to be able to express those thoughts on paper.
So I decided for R, I will spend at least one day a week as his scribe for his novel. I will let him just tell me the story and I will do the typing and help get his word count up. So that is how I will spend my afternoon.

I took a deep breath...

2007-11-08T12:00:00.000-07:00

and went to my room to enjoy a book and some stolen treats.
Thanks Jane:)
They did eventually finish their work, I am still waiting on chores, but the 10 year old is not going to Taekwondo.
Sorry for unloading:)

Help me please.

2007-11-08T11:12:00.000-07:00

I can not begin to explain my frustration to you. The boys were ready to start school at 9 and they sat at the table with their math. It is 11:15 and they are still sitting there and are not finished. They have tortured their younger siblings, used the bathroom repeatedly, fought with each other, stared into space, thrown things at each other, made annoying noises, sang, rolled their eyes, stomped their feet, knocked their chairs over, thrown more things, but they have not done their math.
B at least pretends to do his math. R outright mocks me. I stayed calm for over an hour. I asked R to read his questions aloud to me so I could make sure he was doing them. He sputtered and argued and outright mocked me. He does not do it. I repeat myself every few minutes, "Read me each question and your answer." He gives me dirty looks, stares me down, laughs, mocks. He does not do his math.
He had a page of multiplication drills, no big deal. Very easy. He refuses to do them. He is now rapping. and interspersed with the rapping is humming the macarena. I just screamed at him to just do his work. and I told him no taekwondo today. and I called their father and asked him to come home today and discipline his sons. (his? oops I mean ours. grr.) Their father is sleeping for nightshift, I am sure he did not appreciate my call at 11:15 am. But I am at the end of my rope.
Can anyone give me any ideas? This behavior is not okay, and I am a pretty good disciplinarian usually. I don't make idle threats, I follow through with discipline when it is needed. I do not allow this sort of behavior.
What is happening here? I am seriously gonna lose my mind. I don't know if I can deal with him anymore today without screeching. I hate that.
I just keep repeating myself. Read each question aloud to me. NOW.
Help!

Free Children's Music

2007-11-07T08:27:00.000-07:00

My Dad sent me this link the other day for arts reformation dot com. This page is filled with Children's recordings, mp3's of vinyl records from the 50's and 60's. I am madly downloading them as we speak. Tons of recordings of Fairy tales, fables and nursery rhymes as well as interesting schooly stuff like Songs Children Sing: Germany or Italy or...
I am also interested to have a listen to their Children's Introductions to: (orchestra, ballet, Shakespeare, multiplication.....)
I can't wait to unzip some of these files and share them with my kids!

Word count as of November 6

2007-11-07T00:18:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to say, before I got in bed.
10418!

word count for day 5

2007-11-06T08:25:00.000-07:00

Word count as of last night
Me: 7004
DS#1: 3440
Ds#2:1072

We all fell behind on the weekend, but it was a good learning experience for us. We can not reasonably expect to write on the weekends, we often have hockey at 6:30 in the morning and often til 11 pm. Activities fill our weekend schedule to over-flowing. I figured out how many words it would take each day for us to only write on weekdays. 2300 for me, 1400 for ds #1 and 560 for ds #2. ds #1 and I made our word counts yesterday, but I am afraid it is too much for my younger son. He is stressed at falling behind and now the new bigger word count is stressing him. 400 words a day is a huge stretch for him. Going from maybe writing 5, 5 word sentences a day to 400 words a day in a very short period of time is a big deal. Add to that his extreme difficulty with spelling I really think I may be pushing him too far asking for that extra 160 words a day. Yesterday he wrote for hours and hours and still did not meet his goal, I don't want him to feel like he can't do it, I want it to be fun for him. But I want his goal to be achievable for him.
Not sure what to do about this for him, I will try to schedule at least 2 hours on the weekend days for him to write I guess. Maybe that will be less stress for him.
Any ideas?

Busy weekends = no writing

2007-11-05T16:04:00.000-07:00

Okay okay, I know I told you to bug me about my word counts every day. My word count for the weekend? About 800 words.
I learned something about my family, we do not have time to breath, eat, or sleep on weekends-never mind writing. So I reconfigured our word count needs. I figure to only write on weekdays I need to write 2300 words each weekday, so that is what I am gonna do. That being said, I have had company today and am on my way to hockey right now and I have the flu. So I will be writing tonight after hockey as long as I can keep my peepers open.
My boys have been writing all day, so I should be able to post their counts as well.
Thanks for asking guys, I will keep you updated.

Word counts for Friday.

2007-11-02T21:26:00.000-06:00

Me: I just finished right this second with 4245 words.
DS#1: 2025, he was finished pretty early today, I am thinking he could have done the whole 50000 instead of just 30000. But I didn't want to push it, I like them liking writing!
DS#2: 809 and still loving it. I just can't express how excited this makes me. I am so flippin' proud of my little authors!
I am tired of writing now, so I think that there will be no blogging for me today. Maybe tomorrow.

2007-11-01T14:23:00.000-06:00

Woo Woo! We have all surpassed our word count goals for today!
Kristen: 2141 goal: 2000
DS#1: 1012 goal: 1000
DS#2: 407 goal: 400

Okay, well we surpassed them by a very few words, but still! We are all super excited, and maybe a little high on sugar. I told the boys we would work in half hour increments and try to reach our quarter goals each half hour. When they reached their quarter goals they could reward themselves with a break and a Halloween treat. Worked wonderfully! I think we are off to a wonderful, positive start on our novel writing journey. The boys were a bit intimidated by the whole word count thing before today. But now that they have reached their goals today with seeming ease, they both feel a bit better about the whole thing. You should have seen my 10 year old beaming with pride as I told him how proud and excited I was for him. Last year it was like pulling teeth to get him to write 5 sentences. It could literally take him 10 hours to not accomplish even that. He fought me at every turn. Today he sat and happily wrote 400 words. In less than 2 hours! I am so excited for them. And for myself too. I actually feel like a different person since I decided to do this. I feel like someone who may have something to contribute to the world. I have really struggled with that, so it is a really wonderful feeling. I am actually excited by my life again. I can't wait til January when I start my University courses!
Anywaysss...
had to share, so excited over here!

It is started!

2007-11-01T00:22:00.000-06:00

K, I wasn't gonna start tonight, cuz I am so bag tired. But I was too tired to close the computer and I looked up and it was midnight, so I opened my word processing program and wrote, "This is my novel." and then the words just started coming out of my fingers. 367 of them in 15 minutes. So tomorrow I only have to write 1300! ;) I seriously can not keep my eyes open or I would have kept writing, but I wanted to post my progress.
Good luck to the rest of you, can't wait to hear how you are all doing.

Horrid Prose is my goal.

2007-10-24T13:51:00.000-06:00

Finally doing our first 2 science tests today. We did the reading so long ago that I let them do the tests 'open book'. We just have Rosetta Stone French left to do today. I have to load the program onto their new computers for them I guess.
I need to spend some time prepping for my novel writing, I don't even have characters yet. My main character will be a Mom, like me. Write what you know is the phrase that keeps coming to mind, so I guess I will. I really have no idea for my plot yet, I love mystery stories, but nothing is coming to mind yet. I hope to get some rough planning drawn out, research done, but I have a feeling I will be mostly winging it. The point really is to get a really terrible rough draft finished, just get the words hammered out and see where that takes you. Quantity over quality at this point, and I have to say that may be the only way I ever do this. I am such a perfectionist that my creativity is often snuffed out by my need to have everything just so. I want an awesome rough draft that requires little editing. Well that is never gonna happen. Evah!
My fingers are itching to get started on this, to get dirty and make mistakes as the esteemed Miss Frizzle likes to say. What freedom!

a novel?

2007-10-23T10:32:00.000-06:00

Well, not much to say here. We haven't done much lately. We have fallen behind in science and I have fallen behind in my marking, but it is all good.
The boys are terribly excited because their new laptops finally arrived last week. Dad has spent hours installing drivers and software and working out bugs with tech support. But right now we are all sitting on the couch blogging. Yay!
I signed up the 3 of us for Nanowrimo next month. National Novel writing month. We are gonna write novels, for me that is 50000 words in a month. Should be a crazy, carpal tunnel syndrome filled, caffeine fueled month.
The kids will write less, I think about 12000 word for my 10 year old and 30 000 for my 13 year old. The kids nanowrimo site is really great, I printed off their workbooks for us. The wb takes you write (I mean right;p) through the whole process, helping with character and plot development, etc. There is a teacher area on the kids site that I am finding helpful as we prepare.
I can't wait to get started on our novels, there are a bunch of nanowrimo activities in the city for us to get involved with although mostly for adults. I am hoping to attend a bunch of write-ins and get my word count up sans children.
I need to go mark math so my son can do his test. my favorite thing to do. marking. hm.

Peace in the Storm

2007-10-16T15:28:00.000-06:00

My head hurts from the frustration of today, I think my blood pressure has been elevated all day. My cheeks are flushed, I feel a bit light-headed, my shoulders are hunched and tight, so I am sitting down with a cup of tea to vent and relax.
Why can't they just do as they are asked. Why is it when I put their little sister in the tub and am not in the room, they run downstairs to play computer games. Why is the flippin' computer on? Why can I not stop getting after them and watching like a hawk for even one minute without them goofing off/sneaking off? Why do I think getting upset, or yelling is gonna make one iota of difference to them getting their chores/school finished.
This afternoon their close friends were coming over, I thought this would be great motivation for them to get done quickly. Apparently not. I had to run to the store this morn as we had no groceries for breaky or lunch. Did they do anything but make a mess while I was gone? no. So when I got back I had a new mess to deal with. And their dad is trying to sleep with all the kid noise and the yelling mom noise. Not good.
I disliked them immensely today.
My little monkey boy came up at the point when I was ready to completely go over the edge. He had just put pants on after his bath and was clean and damp and cute. He crawled in my lap and asked if I would cuddle him. So I made a choice. I wrapped him up in my arms, inhaled his sweet scent, felt his little arms wrap around my neck and his little voice coo, "I love you Mommy."
I felt my pulse settle, my muscles relax, my breathing slow as I looked in his beautiful hazel/green eyes and said, "I love you my sweet."
Thank you God for my beautiful children, and moments of peace.

the Science Centre

2007-10-12T11:54:00.000-06:00

So yesterday turned out much better than expected school-wise. We were done at noon, so that is a major bonus. We still haven't done our science test, so no science this week, but not that concerned. They did spend the day at the Space and Science centre. I think next time we go there I will take them to a show in the planetarium, I LOVE the planetarium! And there are a bunch of new Imax movies out that we could see, but only the 13 year old likes to go to those.

The science centre is a pretty cool place. On the main floor there are 3 permanent galleries. The Police services gallery has a mystery for the kids to solve, you get to walk through the crime scene and collect clues; watch news clips about the 'crime'; listen to witness statements; and then take all your evidence to the lab where you learn all about forensics. I love that part. You compare fingerprints, DNA strands, fibres, learn tons of stuff about forensics through hands-on activities. Then you decide who you think did it, enter all your evidence in a computer program and it tells you if your case against the defendant was successful. It is so cool, I love the little news clips you get to see-all recorded by local newscasters.
Next is the human body gallery. It is set up like an old-time carnival fun house. Very bright and noisy and has hands on activities to learn all about your body and senses. The boys love the gallery of gross, containing jars of boogers, feces, urine, stomach acid, any icky thing in your body. (all fake of course)
The third gallery on the main floor is the Green's Garage and Garden. You learn about the environment, weather, recycling, gardening/growing, water and erosion, etc. In the Garage, they have a remote weather forecast studio, where you can record your own weather forecast complete with real footage of real weather. When you are done you get to see yourself on the 'newscast'. Huge hit with my kids.
On the main floor there is also a stage for live science demos about various topics and the Imax theatre.
Upstairs there are tons of hands on activities/brainbusters on all sorts of topics. There is the outer space gallery with tons of computers to do simulations, view NASA photos; there is a space shuttle to walk through (my kids love to sit on the space toilet), a solar powered mini Mars rover to try to maneuver across the terrain; oh tons of cool stuff. They have a computer lab and a Lego Mindstorms lab in there as well. Next to that is the discovery gallery for the younger kids. There is a blocks and trains area; a water table area, complete with wave machine; a science crate, preschool computer area that has a beehive in the summer; and the top area has a giant floor piano, funhouse mirrors, puppet theatre, giant puzzles. All my kids can spent hours there. Up from that are some classrooms.
The last gallery is the feature gallery that changes themes several times a year. They had an awesome dinosaur display recently and now have a Lego Starwars display. This area also has a bunch of hands on physics and body mechanics type displays and a huge lightning in a box.
On the third floor is the planetarium, can't wait to go there again!

Thursday. ugh.

2007-10-11T09:58:00.000-06:00

I don't want to be a teacher today. I kinda want the day off from being a mom too. I haven't managed to shake off the blahs that have been doggin' me the last week. Started as pms, but hasn't really gone away, guess I should have got into bed before 12:30am and then actually gone to sleep instead of reading til I couldn't see anymore. I have a hard time falling asleep when I am in bed alone. ugh.
It is 10 am and I am yelling already. I have asked them to clear the table and wipe it so we can get some schoolwork done numerous times. There are still bowls on the table. I didn't do my marking last night. I watched tv and read blogs. My house is a shambles, I didn't clean last night either. Often during the week I make the excuse that I can't do a good job teaching and keep a perfect house at the same time. But to be honest, neither has happened this week. And I would honestly rather have a clean house, but I think education is more important.
I get really tired of the constant vigilance needed to be here with all 4 kids everyday and trying to raise them to be Godly, responsible, educated, etc...... It is not like they often show any self-motivation to do any of the things I think they need to do. I have to constantly remind them to get back on task; to get back upstairs and back to work; to turn of the flippin' tv, get upstairs, and get their blinkin' work done! I hate that! I want them to love learning, not think it is some job to be done.
Sometimes I just want to give up. Sometimes I am just tired of it all. That is today. I want to go get prettied up and go out into the world of grownups. Anybody want to go for coffee?

Science Centre Homeschool Day

2007-10-10T18:42:00.000-06:00

Our first homeschool day at the Space and Science centre! So exciting:) I haven't signed up for many homeschooly things since we have lived here, we have a pretty busy schedule of outside activities as it is. And with Daddy's often extremely busy work schedule, we like to spend whatever free-time we have with him. And I am not that connected in the homeschool community here. anywaysss...
I did it. I signed the kids up for some classes, even my almost 4 year old! We love the science centre and go quite often, and I think this is a great opportunity to see science in action in a way that is difficult at home. And a very awesome bonus is the likelihood of meeting some other home-educating families in the area. I did see a few familiar faces there, and the kids had a blast in their classes, even if they are little know-it-alls. We asked them what they learned and were informed that they knew all that stuff already. hmmm. well.
They did think the new Star Wars Lego display was pretty cool! And the Robot wandering around, and the lightning-in-a-box. One thing I appreciated is that there were lots of staff on hand and all the displays were operational. Often when we go during the week, it is really quiet and certain things are not up and running.
Everyone here is sick with a cold, but we are managing to keep up with most of our bookwork. I do need to catch up with our marking though.
Off to drive the big kid to Bible study, Mom's taxi is never idle:)

Daddy teacher

2007-10-04T21:20:00.000-06:00

I am sick. ugh. I can`t bweede. My fwoat huwts. wah.
Dh let me stay in bed this morning til 10!! When I got up, he and the boys had to brag that they were already done 2 and 3 subjects! I was surprisingly just happy they had done so, rather than jealous that they were doing for Dad, what they rarely do for me. I have often felt a bit jealous of his ability to get them to listen in the past. But more recently he has had a taste of some of our worst days at home, so he is more understanding of my failings and I am just thankful for his successes.
Anyway, I felt really good that my trying to get them into the habit and schedule of doing certain schoolwork regularly and used to the fact that certain hours are for school, chores, meals, free time is working. wow, run-ON! sorry.
I did not have such a productive day. I need to clean my house. I need to wash and fold laundry. I need to go grocery shopping. So not happening.
Today I drank tea or coffee, wiped my nose, read science with the kids, blew my nose, did grammar with them, blew my nose, drove to Taekwondo, blew my nose. Now I am curled up on the sofa, blowing my nose and rubbing my itchy eyes and eating cough drops.
I am so thankful that dh is home, he has helped tremendously with the kids this week, and taught them a lot too. Hopefully I feel better tomorrow, cuz dh has yard work to do, he can`t be doing my jobs all day!

Day with Friends

2007-10-03T17:33:00.000-06:00

Today was our bi-weekly get-together at a friends. She decided she wanted to do something for others with the house God has given her and wanted to have regular contact with other Moms. So she host an afternoon at her house where we bring snacks and have coffee and play games or just chat. All the kids get together and play, and the Moms can relax and reconnect. It is absolutely perfect. She has made an effort to reach out to some Moms who may be a bit isolated, or new to town, Moms who need to connect with other women. I am so thankful for her. I tend to be a bit shy and introverted, so I am so thankful that God has given me some extroverted friends. We as women so need to connect with other women, it fulfills needs in us that no man ever could. God created us for community, we are social beings and we need to interact with each other. It is actually physiologically beneficial for women to be in social situations with other women as well as being psychologically beneficial.
So we had a wonderful visit, ate lots of veggies and dip, drank coffee and played a game of Yahtzee. We have a lot of children between the four of us, but we barely see or hear them, they do quite well together.
We even managed to get some book work done this morning before we went over there, and now my big boys are playing a board game with my little ones. Man I love my kids, they are so cool about being big brothers and share so much of their time and energy with their younger siblings.

Civic Election

2007-10-02T11:25:00.000-06:00

Yeehaw! So pleased with our evening last night. We put our little ones to bed and had some family time doing our bible reading. Then Daddy led a discussion on current events that he turned into an a lesson on civic elections, educating us on what the positions in civic government are, who is running etc. He showed us a website called Edmonton Election dot ca where we could find all the information for ourselves. Thanks Dear, you are a terrific teacher.

We then did our science reading about what science is not and are all ready to learn about scientific method today and to do our experiment.

Reading the boys journal/blogs today, I can see we have a lot of work to do on punctuation and grammar. YIKES! I try not to criticise or correct journal, as I just want them to write, to be in the habit of writing. But R is writing a great story that I had a hard time following as he used 3 or 4 periods for 300 words, and not one comma.
Tomorrow, first thing, USE OF COMMAS!
We are learning lots about Canadian rivers this week, for instance, did you know the longest CDN river is the Mackenzie, while the largest is the St. Lawrence? Every year when we drive through the Rockies into BC and cross the Continental Divide, Daddy explains what that means. That all the rivers to the East of the divide flow to the Atlantic or the Arctic, and all the rivers to West of the divide flow into the Pacific , so the kids had an even better understanding than I did on how the rivers flowed into and out of lakes and each other. I realize that the divide gets more complicated than that, but that is all we have covered so far:)
I think we had another fairly productive day today, and I am pleased with their progress so far. I need to have a bit more discipline in teaching writing, it is kind of the sore spot for all of us, but considering that I like to write so much it shouldn't be too hard to pass that along.

Science Website

2007-10-02T11:06:00.000-06:00

World Wildlife fund has a neat educators site.
wwf dot ca slash school
"WWF-Canada is proud to offer Schools for a Living Planet, an educational program that provides educators with access to over 30 curriculum-linked, printable in-class activities for grades 3 to 8. Each grade’s unit has a unique environmental theme with material carefully designed to meet curriculum expectations in English, Social Studies, and Science."
This is Canadian and ment to meet Provincial standards in Alberta, BC, Ontario and all 3 Territories.
Subject areas are Grade 3: Forests Alive; Grade 4: Exploring Habitats; Grade 5: Mackenzie Valley; Grade 6: Diversity of Life; Grade 7: Marine Protected Areas; Grade 8: Water

Example of lesson outline:
The Water Unit Includes
One Reading Passage
Five In- class Activities
• Activity 1: Salt Water vs. Fresh Water
• Activity 2: Living With Water: Polar Bears
• Activity 3: Mapping Our Water
• Activity 4: Case Study: Drought
• Activity 5: What You Learned
Wild Ideas – Supplemental Projects
Curriculum Links

There is also a kids site that is very similar to the main site, I haven't had a chance to explore it much.

Cool links

2007-10-01T18:05:00.000-06:00

I found these today.
Homeschool Hacks, a very helpful blog site full of lesson plans; links for everything imaginable with reviews; jam packed with every topic imaginable.

News Flash Five from pbs kids: a current events/news site for kids, complete with lesson plans and 'how to teach' guide for parents/teachers. This site is terrific, I am gonna be using this with my kids.
as I am typing this, the pbs kids site seems to be not loading, so try that one tomorrow:)

October!

2007-10-01T15:10:00.000-06:00

Preschool was so fun today! When Meme got here we played play dough for a while and then we went for a leaf collecting walk. The three preschoolers had so much fun, as did I, snapping photos of them. We took a little jaunt around the neighbourhood, looking at the beautiful fall colours, saying hello to neighbours and racing.

When we arrived back home the kids sorted through their leaves and arranged them on the wax paper squares I gave them. I ironed their arrangements and then we framed our creations. They were so proud and our artwork looks very festive hanging in the window. The big boys were very into this craft too, B actually put together his own leaf collage, R was supposed to be doing math corrections, so he couldn't take part. Daddy and I talked to them a bit about autumn and the changing seasons, we let them play a game about seasons on the computer, and then Daddy printed some cool fall colouring sheets for them. After colouring they had snack and played trains til Meme's Mom came and got her.
For my school age kids, it seems that we are falling into a rhythm for school. There are a lot of distractions in our house though, so one or the other of them is often finishing assignments after 3 o'clock. I would really like to have things done by 3 or even noon each day, that will take a lot of discipline on all our parts, and keeping the preschoolers busy and out of the boys hair. Daddy is home this week, so he was helping R with area calculations - he is such a good teacher, way better than me actually. I organize well, but he is definitely the teacher of the two of us, I sometimes wish he could teach them full-time, rather than the 4 or 5 days a year he is usually home. This year is better than most though, he has already been home a number of days.
We did the usual basics today: Math, journal, Handwriting, Geography/SS, French, we didn't get to grammar or our report writing course. I am hoping I can get the boys to do some science before bed, science works better when the babies are sleeping!
I was so disappointed last week when I realized that we were not actually finished our geography unit. We were only done the sheets I had already photocopied, :) not the whole course. Oops! Today's sheet was about Canadian rivers, had to pull out the atlas today-I love to look at maps, so I was excited. Right now I am trying to get them to finish their chores, it is often like pulling teeth, be dh and I are getting much at following through and giving clear, step by step instructions. I actually need to type them up and post them for the kids, and for dh too;)
Feeling optimistic for the year ahead, we are off to a good start. I am gonna order some books this week, our funding is available now! Love new books! I have tons to order for our Canadian history units.

Does anyone have any advil?

2007-09-20T15:22:00.000-06:00

My head feels like it is gonna explode! I am feeling very frustrated with my children and myself. My kids don't seem to be able to complete anything without me reading over their shoulder. I had such high hopes for today when I woke up and my boys were already working on their school. Their father and I had a big talk with them last night, and I thought maybe something was finally sinking in. Well after math and writing, that all fell apart. It was time for science, they had an experiment to do, which means fun kitchen mess and that they have to do a lab report. Well they put the experiment together, anticipated a mess, so they took it out to the back yard. After the experiment was completed (the balloon on the bottle one, nice fun easy) they were to come in and record their observations and clean up, finish their science reading and maybe to the last quick experiment of the chapter. Then it was lunch and chore time.

Well they played outside with their siblings for a bit, I allowed this and after a while I went to go get them. They came in and instead of getting down to it, they disappeared into the family room to watch tv. Forbidden! There is to be no tv on school days. NONE. They are not even to go down there during school time. Over and over I had to go and drag there butts back upstairs. More often I was yelling from upstairs. I hate yelling for them. especially considering how good they are at ignoring me.

Ugh. I was so frustrated while writing this I actually had to stop writing and go take a time out.
I took them to Taekwondo later and went to sit and have a coffee with the preschoolers. They had hot chocolate, or as Girly likes to say, "Foccee, kid foccee!" Daddy joined us when he got back to the city from his job-site, it was really nice. Then he sent me to get my nails done while he went to pick up the big boys. Then he put them to bed and took me out for dinner and drinks! It was awesome. Sometimes he does a really good job of taking care of me when I am at the edge of my sanity:) I was then ready to cope with Friday! Love you honey, thanks!

I love preschool!

2007-09-18T12:26:00.001-06:00

I made the mistake of telling my 3 year old that we could work on his new preschool stuff as soon as his sister went down for her nap. Well he asked this before breakfast and she doesn't take her nap til 2 pm. It has been a very long day for Juju. He has asked me 30 times if it was time for Girly to take her nap. I told him that Girly doesn't take a nap til after lunch, and then made omelette's for breakfast. He thought that must be lunch and than it must be Girly's naptime!
Girly must feel kinda bad that Juju wants her in bed rather than playing with her. Right now they are chasing each other around the couch, guess they are both okay.
I had a big morning of teaching planned, but we got a bit sidetracked. After grammar, B curled up with Juju to read him a story. It ended up with all four of them curled up in a blanket nest with the Dr. Seuss treasury I bought at Costco yesterday. I think that is pretty much a perfect morning of school. The boys are working on math now, Ryley of course is avoiding and giving me a hard time, and the babies are gonna eat lunch. Hopefully the boys will get their science experiment done this afternoon and some writing. Juju and I should have some fun with preschool stuff.
Okay, we pulled out the Hooked on Phonics kindergarten and started on the learn to read. We did the first activity which are letter name flashcards and a cd. He got bored before the activity was over, very repetitive, but I think we can do a couple reps and then put it away for next time. He wanted to try the video game, so we put in the cd-rom. It has an I-spy game for letter recognition, it was fine and he enjoyed it. He then tried the letter sound game, he doesn't know many of the sounds yet and the first thing he noticed was that the dog named Pop, turns his head away if you answer incorrectly. "Why does he turn his head backwards when I get it wrong Mom?" It bothered him, and when I thought about it, it bothered me too. It felt like rejection to my sensitive boy. When you get it right, Pop turns his head into the page, towards the child. The next thing he said is, "Dogs don't talk Mom." That made me giggle, he didn't say anything about the dog wearing clothes though.
Other than that he enjoyed the activities. I will have to keep an eye on it, and see if I think it is more positive or negative overall. He so wants to learn, he is so hungry to gain the skills to read and write and basically do whatever his brothers can do. I don't want to do anything that will dampen that thirst for knowledge.

Tuesday Sunshine

2007-09-11T10:13:00.000-06:00

I think I will go easy on the book work today, the sun is shining and there is snow in the forecast for later in the week. I am gonna take the kids to the river valley and go for a nice long walk-maybe even to the zoo, the preschoolers should really enjoy that.
Yesterday was really fun. I pulled out my box of Discovery toys preschool stuff. J spent hours doing activities. Matching and sorting games, lots of pre-math stuff, colours, shapes and last night we played an alphabet fishing game with Papa. I let him stay up for a bit after A went to bed so we could play without little destructo hands being involved. It is really fun that he is so into learning and wanting to try stuff.
The boys got their math, handwriting, grammar, journal, geography and science done yesterday and today I need to pick up some red cabbage for our science experiment tonight. I may have to rethink the blogger journaling, because they are spending more time putting in links to games and uploading photos than actually writing.
ooh, Daddy is gonna do a real life geometry lesson today, he need to build some stuff in the garage. fun!
Off to do school.

Rainbows

2007-09-06T21:12:00.000-06:00

Well Thursday is here and we are still going strong, a little weak on the chore end of things, but school went fairly well. Happy with the boys participation and they had a lot of fun doing their science experiment today. Another one in the kitchen, we are learning about the history of science and have been talking about atoms. Today they discovered for themselves that heat speeds up the movement of atoms! Exciting stuff.

We went to buy school supplies after taekwondo today! Yay! Who doesn't love new school supplies. Math set, pencil crayons, calculators and on the boring side, loose leaf.

Oh! It rained this afternoon, and hailed, and there were rainbows in the sky. All four were very excited about the rainbows. I feel like God has blessed me with a rainbow the past few days, a bit of hope that perhaps I can help my children to learn and grow.

Hump Day

2007-09-05T15:15:00.000-06:00

Woo hoo!!!
We put in a full day of edumicatin' today! Math, geography, journal/blogging, writing, handwriting, French, and even a science experiment/lab!! Woopidee doda! So very excited!
Both kids did all their school, and their chores and are now being rewarded with computer time-Star Wars Battlefront is their poison of choice today.
I will admit to being quite frustrated by 10 am and doing a bit of voice-raising, but it did get better.
I had all the kids up before 8, done breakfast and clean-up and dressed by 8:35. It was a great day, I am feeling encouraged finally. Especially because I am planning and putting this all together. Not using a pre-planned out curriculum. I am pulling from different resources I have collected and facilitating their learning! I had planned, and probably still will, buy a computer based curriculum, especially for math and language arts-plus a bunch of awesome books for the kids on Canadian history, both fiction and non-fiction. But it feels really great to be doing it on my own, and succeeding at it. So proud that they are actually getting down to accomplishing their tasks, and even seeming to enjoy it.
yay!!

2007-09-04T13:47:00.000-06:00

oh, gotta remind B-man to get the stuff together for our experiments in science, I may just have to open up a bottle of wine tonight-need a cork.

First day

2007-09-04T13:39:00.000-06:00

Yay! I am so happy with the way our morning went. I started the boys off with a Canadian geography worksheet which they completed quickly while I did some photocopying. We then did a report writing lesson and started our note taking for a little report on chewing gum.
We also started our Science and then did a math lesson. I found Ryley a Batman math workbook at Costco, it actually looks pretty good and he was really excited to start it. I thought it would be good review for him and maybe I will only do more in-depth study of the areas he is struggling with. He has a really good math brain and finds the repetition of our Saxon math excruciating.
This afternoon I am gonna take them to the playground and then we have taekwondo. We missed the 'not back to school' picnic, but I think we had a pretty nice day regardless.

try this again

2007-08-26T14:44:00.000-06:00

New year, old blog-maybe it will get used this year. The plan for this year is to buy each boy a laptop and Switched-on schoolhouse. The grade 5 and 8 curriculum both centre on American history, so I will be supplementing them with Canadian History, geography and government. All their readers will be either Canadian or American historical fiction or biographies. I have the apologia jr high science program dvd-rom, so we could use that instead of the SOS science, regardless, we will begin with the science dvd on monday as well as resume our Rosetta stone, basic grammar, and do a series on report writing.
This year I want them to learn to work independently, take pride in their work, and become above competent writers. I would love for them to learn to love math.:) I want them to take personal responsibility in their schoolwork and chores. I want to nurture their love of learning! rather than squelch it with yelling and busywork.

A better day all round

2006-09-13T19:21:00.000-06:00

Well today Daddy gave us all a hand. He helped me and the kids tidy up this morning and then took R up to his room to work on math. The mail came and there was a package for R from my sis, a new video game-skateboarding! Well talk about lighting a fire, that boy broke a personal math speed record, lol.
We then did spelling, again quickly and easily. We started Foundational Grammar today, it went very well, especially the part where we played I Spy! We had been doing the dictation/grammar worksheets from Sonlight last year, but the grade six grammar exercises were way above my head, never mind B's. So I thought we would start at the beginning, nouns. We will all learn it together, just like the Rosetta Stone French. I can't wait to start that! We need to set up our computer in a more convenient spot though, and buy another.
My mom is off to Europe this week, I think she landed in Paris last night. I decided that we should do a little project about the places she goes, so I printed off some maps today. I thought we could follow her itinerary, plot it and research her stops. A nice way for them to connect with Nana and learn something at the same time. It is also a perfect opportunity to practice that report writing that always seem to get pushed to the back burner.

Avoidance tactics

2006-09-12T15:16:00.000-06:00

So I am avoiding my work today by uploading my CD collection to itunes and creating a spreadsheet to catalogue my Cd's before I store them.
R. is avoiding actually completing his math at all costs. He started talking to me about Pokemon, so I told him that when he is done his math assignment, he could create a spreadsheet about Pokemon. He thought that was cool, so I am excited to teach him how. I love the methodicalness of spreadsheets and lists! I am a geek, I know.
B did his math and spelling and is now playing castle Playmobil with J. I don't mind, as B is keeping J occupied and busy and teaching him how to play make believe and all about knights and castles.
Braeden seems to have matured a bit this year, I think that I am going to be able to just give him a daily schedule, checklist, and let him get to work. Time to get to work on the scheduling.

Argh!!

2006-09-08T17:09:00.000-06:00

What a frustrating day for mama! Back to our old rut of the kids sitting and staring into space and me saying repeatedly, "Do your work. Get back to work. Do your math. Do you need help? No? Then get back to work. Where did those toys come from? Put them away and finish your math. DO YOUR MATH! AHAHHHHHHH!"

I want them to love learning, I want them to be literate and productive members of society. Shouldn't they be able to do a lesson of math in less that 3 or 4 hours? Shouldn't they have to do a lesson of math?

I wish I knew how to make learning fun for all of us in a practical way that we can all accomplish. We tried a reward system last year, that worked well for a few weeks. Then we all lost our motivation.

B did do his math, spelling, dictation and grammar, and work on his letter-still no good copy though. That took him til almost 4.

R finally finished his math after 4, I did interrupt him at one point to work on spelling. Spelling did not go well. He got 5 out of 7 words wrong on his pretest. We use Spelling Power and the kids are pre-tested on the list before they see the words. Then they only study the words that they spell wrong. He gets discouraged when he gets a lot wrong though. Once we get to 5 mistakes we stop and he does the study section.

We did get some 'school' done today, but no fun, no impromptu learning. I don't want to fight with them and have to make them do their work all the time. I don't want them to hate learning. I need direction God. Help!

The boys had a big reward to look forward to tonight. A CFL game. B is supposed to go with the church youth group, and R with his dad. They are so lucky to have that opportunity! How fun. I had also told them that we could go to the space and science centre with some other homeschoolers in the afternoon if they got their assignments completed in the morning. That did not happen of course.

The boys did get to go to the game and the Eskimos won!! They are so excited.

Graduation day

2006-09-07T13:07:00.000-06:00

Today I let my husband convince the children to get their math completed. That was nice for me, both of the boys love math and are great at it, but they like to stare into space instead of completing their assignments. argh.
They just left with their dad to go to their uncle's police academy graduation. They seemed to be really psyched about it!
This evening after dinner and dinner chores we finished delivering the flyers in our neighborhood. I am going to spend the next few days getting organized and making schedules for the kids so that they can complete their assignments independently.

Official day 2 of the school year.

2006-09-06T14:16:00.000-06:00

Well today is the second day back for all the school kids around here. There are a lot of little boys running around our cul-de-sac, lots of built in playmates for our kids. Of course they all go to school, so our 2 were a little sad that summer was over and all their friends were gone.

I knew they would feel that way, so yesterday afternoon we took the kids to the 'not going back to school' picnic. It was really nice for the kids to meet a bunch of other home educating kids and for me to meet some other parents. I haven't gotten together with other home educators since we moved here.

The boys did math in the morning, as they did yesterday, and they worked on letters to our sponsor child. They also helped us deliver flyers for our church fall carnival. They thought that it was pretty cool that they got to invite all their friends and neighbors.

I am feeling a little overwhelmed by the prospect of starting another school year. I really don't know what I believe to be the best way to help my children learn. My natural instinct is to schedule their day with lessons and subjects. I do not want to stifle their love of learning, but I cannot escape from the feeling that there should be fruit to show for their endeavors. I also realize that I need to be a more active participant in what they are about. I have been so distracted with babies the last few years that I feel I have disconnected from the older boys a bit.

Part of the reason I wanted to write this blog is so that I would have a place to record our days and be able to look at it and see what works; what and how they are learning; and what needs to change.
I pray that this will be a year of discovery and growth for us all, and that God will help me create a rhythm in our home to facilitate this.