Eric finished his Kindergarten math workbook! So, I'm making cupcakes and we are having a party tonight! Whoo hoo! :)

One of the best things ever. Ok, many of their toys are just too much. Too loud, too obnoxious, too everything. But, their DVDs are great. They have helped my oldest two kids a lot and I'm sure my youngest will love them too. She already asks for them and she's only 2.
I also like the LeapPad, Little Touch, and Leapster games they have. Fiona and Eric love their Leapsters. It keeps them very busy and they learn in a way that seems non-threatening to them. Colleen loves her Little Touch. (or what ever it is called). It makes her feel grown up and I don't have to worry about her tearing up the big kids games.
Just needed to share. :)

Can Tarot be school?  Fiona seems interested. I'm not sure if I would consider it part of my religion really though. I guess it doesn't matter if I do or not, we could call it that if anyone asked. LOL Whose business is it anyway. :)  I wonder what other subject we could call it?

I've been trying lately to decide what kind of home schoolers we are. I like to say "unschooled", but we aren't really. Josh and I really want to have some set stuff for them to do and already have them doing Math as much as I can. (Not a lot at one time, but I'm trying for every day) I like the idea of Classical, but can't do it like I've seen online. We seem to do history and maybe science that way. Maybe we are eclectic. I guess that works as well as anything. :)

I wish we could totally unschool, but that just doesn't seem comfortable for us. At least I'm happy doing that through 4-5 years old. Maybe by the time Colleen is older I will be able to give her even longer. Actually, I feel the need for Fiona to do math more than Eric. I can tell day to day that Eric is picking up the addition and subtraction that he needs. It seems harder to do that with multiplication and division. Of course doing it in your head seems easier to them than seeing it on paper. That is where I have problems with them. They just freeze on me until I show them they can do it.  Eric refused to try subtraction until I found a page that covered it without looking like it. Once he was done I told him he had just done subtraction and he was shocked. LOL

We are going to do a lot of reading up on mythology. I want the kids to be able to recognize a good story when they see one. (in other words, I want them to be able to see that bible stories are just that. STORIES) I got 4 books from the library. Three of them are exactly what I wanted. They include bible stories in their list of myths. I love how they handle it. It's perfect.
What are the books you ask?
In the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World  Told by Virginia Hamilton
Mythology of the World  By Neil Philip
The last one is a DK Eyewitness Book with the title of Mythology.  At the bottom is says "Discover the captivating stories told by different cultures to explain the mysteries of our world."  I love it because that is exactly how we have tried to explain religion to our children.

I also got The Illustrated Book of Myths: Tales & Legend of the World  retold by Neil Philip  It is also a good book, but doesn't have the bible included like the others.

Ok, so I lost my info and couldn't find my way back. I'm back now though. I am trying to blog on about 3 different sites, so I hope I can keep up with each.

We are still home schooling. Fiona is 8 and in third now and Eric is 6 and doing kindergarten. He is about to move into his 1st grade math workbook though.   Colleen is 2 and just in the way. LOL

I've been trying to find a group of home schoolers for us to get involved with. The problem is that there isn't a very big number of home schoolers around here. On top of that, most are Christian (and by home schooling are probably really big with the religion thing) and I'm not sure if my pagan family would be welcome. I'd like to say "their loss", but it's my kids' loss too since they don't get to do a group thing.
For now I guess I will keep up with bringing them with us to things as much as possible so that they get to be involved. Hopefully we will find some classes or something for them to do.  Fiona at least gets to go to Girl Scouts, so that is good.

So, off to finish cooking the bread pudding. Yum!

Ugg!  So I was going to get Colleen to sleep early last night. 9pm I'm laying down with her and trying to get the kids to stay in bed. I had to get up to do a couple things and soon it's almost 10. I start to put a new diaper on Colleen and here comes Fiona running. She says she thinks Eric is sick. I found Eric in the bathroom throwing up.   Oh, did I mention Josh wasn't home? He was over helping a friend of his fix his bathroom.

So I called Josh up and he told me he couldn't come home to help.   But he gave me the idea to put both kids on the couches and let them watch a video.  That worked. Whew!  I finally got Colleen to sleep and went out to check on them at 12am. Fiona had fallen asleep but Eric hadn't. He just couldn't sleep.  He hadn't thrown-up again either, so I gave him the option to go back to his bed and take the small trash can with him.  He fell asleep soon after.

Josh came home at about 1 am I think.

We (the kids and I ) slept in this morning.

I forgot! Last Sunday DH took Fiona and Eric sledding. A friend from work called up and invited them out to his inlaws place. They were very excited. :)  They didn't get to head out until after 5 and they were back shortly after 6, but they were frozen through and glowing with the fun they had. :) They even made a new friend.

I was surprised to hear that Eric had ridden on the four-wheeler with Josh's friend. Eric isn't very outgoing with adults. Fiona had fun with the friend's daughter. They rode on the sled being pulled by the four-wheeler. :)  They slept well that night. ;)

The kids have been on a workbook kick lately.  Especially Eric. Fiona still is leery after going to school a couple years. :) I'm glad to finally be getting the books used up. I'd like the excuse to buy some new stuff. ;)

We are doing something new for Math. Fiona hates addition and subtraction. If she sits down to a worksheet all I hear is moans and groans and how horrible it is.   So, Josh and I had a brainstorm. We are printing out sheets of problems and having her draw a picture on it. She can't help but see the problems and we are figuring she is getting exposed to it in a way that doesn't cause her to hate math.  I know that when you can read, you can't help but read and we are hoping it will work the same with math problems.  Hopefully her brain will take in the info and be working on it even though she doesn't know it.   I'm also printing off some easy pages for Eric to draw on also.  He can do very simple problems (5+1, 2+3, etc) so he will be taking in info too.

Mostly, Fiona wants to work on geometry for now. They were learning about shapes and sides, vertexes and faces.  I found a cool online geoboard that the kids like to play with. This site is cool too because they can manipulate the 3D shapes.

Dh took the older two kids out to play in the snow yesterday. They had so much fun! We got about 6 inches I think.  Today, we brought a mixing bowl full of snow in for Colleen to play with. All three kids had a lot of fun with it. We even added some food coloring to it.

 

We "officially" started this week.  We are learning about Kansas. We want the kids to learn about all of the states and figured we would start with the one we live in.   Also, this month is Kansas' "birthday" month. (when it became a state)

The kids are on a workbook kick this week. Eric is nuts over his workbooks and just flying through them. I've been surprised to find out that he has the basic idea of addition and subtraction down. I've also been pleased to see he has prgressed in is number and letter writing ability. That's with no practice in the past few weeks even.

In other news...  Fiona has been selling Girl Scout cookies!  He goal was 75 boxes. DH took the order form to work with him and sold 37 boxes!  Then a guy he works with called us and ordered some for himself and his brother. 16 boxes total! Between that and the ones she had sold to the family already, she made her goal! And we haven't even ordered ours yet!

A new year and a new begining. F (7.5) finished out the first semester of 2nd grade and is now at home. E (5) can start telling people that he is in Kindergarten. He didn't qualify at the public school, but does at ours.  C (1) doesn't care yet. LOL

Our style...well I claim eclectic. Mostly we are going to unschool.  At this point, I'm only going to have them do workbook type things if they are interested. We want to focus on their joy in learning. We can't wait to take them on lots of trips. DH (J) is excited to take them with him when he is cutting fire wood. He wants to be able to involve them with what he does as much as possible.  It's great to see them connecting with him.

I'm glad to have the chance to settle into a patter/routine/what ever you want to call it, and not have to start over each week/weekend, vaction, etc.  I hated how our groove would get messed up by the school schedual.

I'm sure the kids wil continue to get closer. I'm glad they will get this chance.

I'll stop there for now. Got to leave something to write about later.