• Apr. 12, 2008
Fun Week

This has been a fun week. On Monday, we went to a local college and saw Teddy Roosevelt. It was a musical/play. The play was about 3 of Teddy Roosevelt's children hunting for a treasure. Teddy takes the book Treasure Island and puts a piece of a made up scavenger hunt. The children are hunting for the treasure that the think no one knows about. The governorness, their father, and his assistant all know about it. The treasure turns out to be the big dipper. It was a great play and even my husband and I laughed through most of it.

Friday night we went to another college and saw Anne of Green Gables. The kids didn't like this as much because it wasn't a muscial. The did like it somewhat. It was a long play but worth the money. There were times that I cried and laughed.

The kids have gotten in their theater and some literature this week and the plays made it a little bit fun for them. I just wish they would've gotten some more work done but we will get there. This week has been busy with the two plays, exercise at the YMCA, and storms full of rain. We have been very lucky that we haven't floated away. Next month will be just as fun as we are scheduled to help setup for the Scholastic Book Fair. For our time, we will receive $20 worth of books of our own choice. Plus we get the other books at a discounted rate. I can't wait.

~Hugs

Tami

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• Apr. 3, 2008
Doubting Myself

I have been really doubting my decision to homeschool lately. The kids are fighting constantly. We are having a hard time completing our schoolwork. I just don't understand what is going on. My daughter tells me all the time that she doesn't understand things. She just sits there and won't answer questions or talk. My son will get so frustrated that he will yell at me or throw something. The seem to out of control. I have tried to do different things with them. I recently decided to include a couple of field trips. Nothing different. Maybe we just need a little break.

~Hugs

Tami

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• Mar. 30, 2008
Homeschool Funnies

I saw this on Bobbi's blog and thought it was so neat. Take a look and maybe you will agree with me.

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• Mar. 1, 2008
Vulture Vomit

We actually made vulture vomit at Incredible Pizza! Wonders of Wildlife from Bass Pro Shops had this as one of the activities. We took a ziplock bag and put glue and water in it with some food coloring and mixed. When it was mixed well, we added some water and borax. We ended up with some vulture vomit "goop". The kids enjoyed it. They did a program and showed us vultures, bats, snakes, and millipedes. We learned that millipedes have a 1000 legs and centipedes have 100. There was a lot of infomation and we video-taped it to watch later. I plan to let the kids watch the video again and then take a quiz over it. We liked the activity a lot and asked them to do something like this again.

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• Feb. 28, 2008
Work Finally Done!

We have finally gotten our house back. We don't have everything put back in its place, but we are working on it. The kids still haven't done a lot of work, but we will catch up. Kody had some placement testing done today. I hope to find out next week why he is struggling. We have been working on 6th grade work, but he still struggles. He helped the guys work on the house and floors, so I hope I can count that toward some of his high school shop class. He used all kinds of tools. One of the guys taught Kody how to use an air nail gun and the tools to pull up plywood or sub-floors. We will get on track Monday.

Sheyanne went to the homeschool program at the local library. They did a library scavenger hunt. It was pretty fun. The kids had to find things in the library like internet sites, resource material, and catalog information. Tomorrow we are going to Incredible Pizza for a program there. Wonders of Wildlife, part of Bass Pro Shops, is putting it on. The program is suppose to be about Missouri Caves and the animals and their habitats. This should be exciting for the kids. Plus they get to eat pizza and play games. Well it is back to work on getting things put away.

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• Feb. 13, 2008
Remolding

Things around here have been noisy. We have guys in here remolding the bathroom. They took everything, including the drywall and subfloor, out. We are 9 days now without a bathroom and hot water. We stayed in a motel room for 3 days in the middle of all this. The kids thought that was the best thing ever. This whole time we are not getting a lot of school done. Sheyanne will sit and work for little while then is ready to move because of all the noise. Kody, who has Asperger's Syndrome, is getting too distracted. He can't concentrate with all the noise. I have let him get up and spend most of the day watching the guys work or helping them. He has watched them demolish everything, put wiring in, plumbing, tiling, and putting everything back together. Very little school work is getting done for these 2 weeks. Hopefully we will be back in gear next week.

I started Kody in 8th grade math and he still struggled. I talked with a friend that homeschools in Tennesse and she suggested that I take him back done to the basics. I'm going to Sam's tomorrow and buying a 6th grade curriculum book that has math, spelling, language, and reading in one. I hope this way I can test him to find out where he is. We did go to the library last week and I picked out some books on the human body. I thought we could get away from the text books and do a little something different. I have ben working on picking out the things that should interest him. Since he wants to be a doctor, I thought this should interest him.

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• Jan. 23, 2008
Better Week

This week is going better for us. This is our third week of homeschooling. My son is struggling with his biology though. I tell him to read the chapter and then answer the questions. He will sit there for a few minutes acting like he is reading. He starts to answer the questions and gets stuck on the first one. I tell him to look where he read it and he tells me he can't find it. I go through my book and read the same thing and there it is. I don't want to give him all the answers, but he does this on all the questions. Does anyone have any suggestions? He is a 9th grader. Other than this, he flies through his work and barely misses any. My daughter does fine. She gets frustrated when she doesn't get everything right. Otherwise she is fine.

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• Jan. 18, 2008
new things

All of this is new to me. I started homeschooling my two children just 2 weeks ago. The first week was good, but this week has been so rough. The kids just don't want to work on work and are testing their boundaries. Kody is my 15-year-old son and Sheyanne is my 9-year-old daughter. They are both unique in their own ways. Kody is into music and played the electric guitar in the church youth band for a couple of months. Sheyanne loves dance and is in competition dance this year. I pulled them out of Christian school at the end of 2007. There was only 2 teachers and one would be there one day and the next day the other one there. They were not there at the same time. There are 30 kids in the school. The teacher would tell them what pages to do and go off. The kids started hating school. They would beg me to not make them go to school.

I think I made the right decision to pull them out. They like being homeschooled. They want to get to work on schoolwork almost everytime they get up.

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