A Glimpse Into Our Homeschooling Life ...

Today we broke from our regular school day and headed out to Mug Up - we don't go to very many of these outings (I think this is the second one for this school year).  Anyway, it was really neat to see the "regulars" and to meet some of the new families in the group.

Before we headed out, we stopped in at the Post Office and picked up a parcel - I was very good and waited until we got home to open it up.  Last week I had ordered some things from C.H.E.R. and today they came in.  The first item that I saw, when I opened the box was a Consumer Math book .... Don and I have been discussing getting one of these books for the kids for a while - we had also been discussing it with our facilitator (she suggested that this be an "over the summer math program" rather than a regular math program - this book wouldn't be done in one summer, though, which is fine by us).  Flipping through the book, I noticed topics like:

• Income (hourly wages & salaries, payroll deductions, bonds, stocks)
• Budgeting (standardized budgets, developing an annual budget)
• Personal Banking (chequing accounts, bank transactions, calculation of interest on savings)
• Borrowing Money (simple-interest loans, amortized loans, credit cards)
• Transportation (buying a new car/old car, calculating monthly payment, insurance)
• Food (budgeting for food, best buys, reducing food costs)
• Maintaining a Home (utilities: gas/power/water & sewer/phone, home improvements)
• Life and Health Insurance (life/term/whole-life/health)
• Income Taxes (taxable income, income tax liability)

• gardening
• cooking (meals & snacks)
• handcrafts (knitting, crocheting, braiding rugs, sewing)
• looking after children/being a mother

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Yesterday our school board offered an art class, Charlotte really wanted to take this class .... Josh, not so much, lol.

So, off to the city Charlotte and I went - Josh stayed home and looked after the animals (Jake and Hunter ).  When we got there we had a bit of a wait because the younger kids (grades 1 to 3) had their class first - they were drawing a landscape picture, from what I saw of the final pictures they turned out really well.  I didn't mind the wait - it gave me a chance to chat with some of the other Mom's .... actually met one Mom that lives, maybe, 5 minutes away from us.

When it was the older kids (grades 4 to 6) turn they all went in, as well as some of the Mom's - I had taken my knitting in with me and managed to get some of my lace sweater done.  It was a very informative class - some of the techniques she taught the kids were ones that I had never learned, so they were filed away for future use.  Here is the final result of the class that Charlotte took:

One of the hardest things that Charlotte always found, when drawing faces, was doing the eyes - Georgia, the instructor, taught the kids a very easy way to do them.  We're going to be framing this picture and hanging it up on our wall. 

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Today we started the kids on their Novel Studies - this was one thing that our facilitator asked us to do this year ... we're starting with just the one, but will find out later on if they need to do another one for this school year.

Joshua is reading Silverwing by Kenneth Oppel.  So far, he is really enjoying reading the novel .... not really enjoying doing the Novel Study, though, lol.  Charlotte is reading Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery, she's also enjoying this novel ..... and it looks like she is doing pretty good with the Novel Study.  It's amazing how two kids can be soooooo different, lol.  One thing that they are very similar in, though, is that I had to remind both of them to stop reading after the first chapter, lol, they would have read their books in one sitting .... if I would have let them, lol.

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Well, I knew that it was going to happen .... it does every year, we tweak our schedule about 2 weeks after we start school.  This year did not leave me disappointed, lol.

Both the kids came up to me yesterday telling me that they felt that they were getting homework way to often - now, my first thought was "Well, if you cut down on the amount of time you spend looking off into space, you wouldn't have so much homework" ..... instead of saying that, I looked at them and replied "Well, let's take a look at the schedule and see what we can do about it"

After much discussion, it came out that they usually have homework with their Read & Report (they research a topic and then write a one page report on it) - sooooo, we decided to remove P.E. from the schedule (both my kids are active outside pretty much every day, so I felt we could safely remove it from the schedule) and added a new "subject" - the name of this new subject "Ketch-Up Class" (and yes, the spelling is quite intentional on it, lol).  For a half an hour, the kids can use this "class" to work on anything that didn't get completed during the rest of the school day - however, if they don't get it finished during Ketch-Up Class, then it is considered homework and it must be finished before the next day.

So far, they are quite excited about this new addition to our school schedule - we haven't tried it out, yet ... mainly because Wednesday's are only a half day for us so that we can head over to the Library or get together with other homeschoolers. 

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