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Well we have been trying to get back in the swing of things this month. We took June off with it being so hectic. The new curriculum we started last school year I am pretty sure will be a success. The kids are getting more and more into their reading and I believe they are starting to enjoy it. Which is a huge relief for anyone that has children who swear to hate reading. This year our main goal will be to get the kids learning on their own. Learning how to go the extra step or two to look up things and research them further. Hoping for a great new start! |
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Well now that we are getting the hang of our schedules and the new curriculum we are about to add library days into the mix. I kind of dread taking all 5 of them to the library but I am sure we will manage just fine. The kids are enjoying reading more than they had before. Now we just need to focus on reading the books on the list instead of just the fun books. But I know we should never despise meager beginnings. |
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It has been close to if not more than a month since we started implementing the Robinson Curriculum. It is going good. The kids are still getting the hang of the schedule but otherwise they are starting to do the learning on their own. Which is great! I am really enjoying this. |
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Today was Kaitlin's first Judo Tournament! We thought Megan was going to compete but her coach wanted her to watch one first, so she will compete in the next one. Kaitlin got 2nd place. I am so proud. I was going to post some video but I can not figure out how. |
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The new schedule and curriculum is working out great! I love it! It is freeing up so much time and the kids are learning how to learn on their own. Yeah!! |
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A friend of mine heard of the Robinson Curriculum so we checked it out, loved it, and are starting to use it today. Its a new day! This curriculum cost $195 and the best part is that it is for ALL of the kids. You have to buy the math separate but that is ok since I am saving a lot and the Saxon isn't too expensive. It is also a self teaching curriculum, so that takes a lot of time and pressure off of me. So with our new schedule that we have been working on and the new curriculum they have just been busy little bees. I love the vocabulary from this curriculum. It is roughly about 6000 words compiled from ACT, SAT, and other placement tests. All of the books for them to read come on CD format for the computer. This is because most of them are out of print. We did find a lot of them at a used book store to cut down on printing costs. However, it shouldn't cost over $100 a year in printing cost. This is also a Christian based curriculum with copy work coming out of the Bible. I think I am going to like this.
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I have been getting pretty frustrated over planning the days work. I homeschool 5 kids. My 3 and 2 of my sisters kids. When I am preparing their work I often feel that I am giving them lots of work that will busy them for most of the day covering almost all of the subjects. When they go to complete the work sometimes they are done in less than an hour. I am thinking wow I thought I gave a lot of work. So I am thinking of going back to Abeka instead of sticking with the Classical. Some days I feel like I spend more time preparing the work then the kids spend completing it. Well I have to get back to planning today because I have not done that yet.
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Is anyone else tired of checking work to find out that had they only followed the directions they would have gotten the answers right? Well when I make their next history test I am thinking of putting my own spin on the directions. I will make regular directions for the test but right after that the last of the directions will read: Do not take this test, hand it in with only your name on it. I wonder how many of them will turn their test in and how many will actually take the test. Maybe that will teach them to read directions in the future. Helpful hint to those of you with preteens/teens and their hormonal tantrums. When your child gets to this "wonderful" time in your childs life, be sure to go through your home and make sure that your shelving, pictures, and anything else is secure. We found this out yesterday when one of many hormonal tantrums erupted. In the midst of my daughters angst over not getting her own way, she begins in her terrible preteen temper tantrum. After saying very ugly things to her cousin, she gets sent to her room. Throwing her tantrum on her way inside she slams the door and there you go. Goodbye shelves in the garage. They came crashing down. So word to the wise, make periodic checks to make sure things are secure in your home before they all come crashing down. Oh the joys!
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Now that we are getting back into the swing of school, I am really missing the holidays. Where we just took it easy and had a nice break from school work. Right now I just want to go lie in bed and watch a good movie. I am getting frustrated because I have really smart kids but I am wondering what happened to their common sense. How can a person be so smart and have absolutely no common sense what so ever? Oh well I guess it happens to the best of us! I can not wait until be break for Easter! |
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Today we are implementing our new schedule. So far its not so bad. Not everything is not working out according to the schedule and we do have those who are playing around a little. It will just take some getting used to, even for me, but I know we will get it and soon find that we are getting more done in a school day. |
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Well it is snowing in Louisiana if you can believe it. The kids are thrilled and even more so since I (naturally) let them go out and have a good time. This is a once in a lifetime kind of event for us so I would have been just horrible not to let them play. We are wishing it would have lasted much longer but it is starting to melt and I am not sure if we can expect more any time soon. We did get a chance to make a snowman. It was so beautiful everywhere we looked was pretty much all white. At least we got about 4 to 5 hours of some pretty good hard snow. I would think quite a few inches. So that has been our glorious day. |
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I have always been a really organized person. However, lately it seems I can't get it together for any small task. Well I came across a website, Titus2.com, and it has some great resources on it. We bought one of the books, Managers of the Home. This is an excellent resource. It helps you with scheduling and managing your day, chores, anything you can think of. So for the past week or so I have been trying to formulate a schedule that will work best for us. In the back of the book they also give great examples for consequence ideas for not doing chores or just not having an obedient heart when it comes to school work. I am really looking forward to implementing whatever schedule we make. To finally have a smooth sailing day.
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I am thinking we need to redo our mummy project. For a while I had forgotten about it and have not followed all the steps properly. However, the drying out process in not working the way it should and I think we have a lot of bacteria growing on the bird. Which may indeed cause a problem when we continue with the rest of the project. So I think we will start it over soon. We get the Top Secret things from Highlights. Well the other day my youngest two, Kaitlin and Ravin, were playing with the maps that come with the package. They were "shocked" I guess the word would be to find out that the countries in Africa we learned in geography were actually real countries. They bring the map to me saying "look mama, Egypt, Botswana, Sudan, etc. they are all here." So I thought this was funny and asked them if they thought that I just made up the names of the countries for fun! I suppose it was just one of those moments that you had to be there. |
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I was searching around and found a really good website with a lot of helpful homeschool resources. It is titus2.com There are alot of things I would like to get from this website and has just been interesting searching through the site. I wanted to share it with others. |
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We had a geography test today on Africa. We do Story of the World and are on Volume 1. So I have taken our geography from this. Since we start off with Ancient Egypt I decided to do Africa. For the test today I chose 20 of what I felt were the most well known locations in Africa. Kaitlin got all of them right, Ravin had one wrong, and Haedyn missed 5 but I think he just got a little confused on some. After all he is only 6 and I think for his age he did awesome. I am proud of them all. However, I am most proud of my daughter Megan and my niece Mackenzee. They labeled all 20 correctly. In addition to this, the 2 of them took the initiative to learn more. Megan labeled 59 countries in Africa. This includes the outlying islands and bodies of water. Mackenzee labeled 38 of these. Both of them correctly labeled these countries and bodies of water. NOT ONE WRONG! I am so excited and proud that they went the extra mile and learned all they can. From what I can tell and I may be off by one or two, but there are at total of 61 items on the map to label and the were able to label the location of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I am most proud of the fact that Mackenzee is 8 and in addition to learning extra, the majority of her spellings were correct.
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Last week we started on our mummification project on a cornish hen. Little did I know that the gizzards are already taken out of these, which was a big disappointment to the kids. The were arguing over who got to pull it out. We are just waiting for it to dry out, continuously changing the salt and baking soda. We named our hen (mummy) Pennie the Hennie. The hen is starting to look a little green, I hope that is normal. We may try to make our own paper next week if I can get the materials needed for that. |
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We are getting excited about our next project. This idea was given to us by a good friend of mine. Since we are doing The Story of the World Vol. 1. So we will mummify a chicken next week. They asked me if we were going to use a real live chicken. It was cute. Then we will make our own paper (also a suggestion by my friend). I wish we could make all of our subjects this enjoyable! |
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Well we have a new baby boy! 7lbs 8oz. Born on Daddy's birthday. |
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Interesting day of homeschool today. My eldest sister is having her baby today. Yeah!! Something maybe a year or two ago we all thought would never happen. We are preparing some work to bring with us to the hospital to wait the arrival of her baby boy. Seeing as though we are primarily a family of girls this will be boy number two! Yeah! All the kids are very excited although unfortunately they will not be able to witness the actual birth. But I think they will live through it. Needless to say we have been unable to get any kind of school work done but that will not kill us. |
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We decided to join homeschool blogging to meet new people and to share our daily experiences. We are also excited to meet others. Look forword to sharing! |