May. 29, 2009
What we've been up to lately
We seem to finally be getting back to a new normal around here lately. Regina is 2 months old now, and settled in nicely. She's starting to eat better now, up to 1.5-2oz every 2 hours during the day and only waking once at night around 2am. She's smiling and happy much of the day and in total awe of her siblings. They love to talk to her and try to make her smile.
We finished up our yearly testing this week. I just sent the finished tests back to Seton today, so hopefully next week I'll get the results back so we can finish up our end of year paper work. The twins loved taking their test. My kids are strange. I remember dreading standardized tests when I was in school. My kids look forward to it every year and they actually enjoy it.
Now that testing is done, we are in unschool mode for the summer. The current passions that we'll be delving into are birding, gardening and optical illusions.
The boys started birding a few months ago and they've learned so much already without any help from me. We set up a bird feeder outside our front window and they are now familiar with all the birds who frequent our feeder. We found a great website to learn more about each bird we see. All About Birds. The boys could spend hours here listening to bird songs, watching videos, looking up birds they've never seen...it's a definite favorite.
This year we are planting a fairly large vegetable garden. Riley is sort of the instigator here. He loves tomatoes, and last year he had several tomato plants. They did pretty well, so he wanted to expand this year. We planted several tomato plants, cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash and green beans.
After visiting Melissa Wiley's blog and reading this post and viewing the video several times, my twins wanted to learn to make optical illusions. So we checked some books out of the library and they've been working on drawing their own. Robbie's are pretty impressive--I'll have to scan them and share.
Sarah is spending her free time re-reading the Harry Potter series, reading Berenstain Bear picture books to Regina, helping with the garden, and writing lots of stories.
I'm learning to balance caring for an infant, homeschooling, keeping up with the house, and figuring out a way to make time to exercise and learn to eat better. I've not been able to drop this last 10lbs, and none of my clothes fit. I'm hoping to be able to wear pants that have buttons by the end of the summer.
And now I must tend to a hungry baby!
We finished up our yearly testing this week. I just sent the finished tests back to Seton today, so hopefully next week I'll get the results back so we can finish up our end of year paper work. The twins loved taking their test. My kids are strange. I remember dreading standardized tests when I was in school. My kids look forward to it every year and they actually enjoy it.
Now that testing is done, we are in unschool mode for the summer. The current passions that we'll be delving into are birding, gardening and optical illusions.
The boys started birding a few months ago and they've learned so much already without any help from me. We set up a bird feeder outside our front window and they are now familiar with all the birds who frequent our feeder. We found a great website to learn more about each bird we see. All About Birds. The boys could spend hours here listening to bird songs, watching videos, looking up birds they've never seen...it's a definite favorite.
This year we are planting a fairly large vegetable garden. Riley is sort of the instigator here. He loves tomatoes, and last year he had several tomato plants. They did pretty well, so he wanted to expand this year. We planted several tomato plants, cucumbers, peppers, zucchini, yellow squash and green beans.
After visiting Melissa Wiley's blog and reading this post and viewing the video several times, my twins wanted to learn to make optical illusions. So we checked some books out of the library and they've been working on drawing their own. Robbie's are pretty impressive--I'll have to scan them and share.
Sarah is spending her free time re-reading the Harry Potter series, reading Berenstain Bear picture books to Regina, helping with the garden, and writing lots of stories.
I'm learning to balance caring for an infant, homeschooling, keeping up with the house, and figuring out a way to make time to exercise and learn to eat better. I've not been able to drop this last 10lbs, and none of my clothes fit. I'm hoping to be able to wear pants that have buttons by the end of the summer.
And now I must tend to a hungry baby!