Pooh Personalities

We finished reading House at Pooh Corner, and as usual (whenever I and Pooh meet...) I am struck by A.A. Milnes classic characters and how we seem to "know" these characters that live in the 100 Acre Wood. So...which personality are you?

I will share how I discovered my own inner "pooh"ness. When I was a kid, I was always teased about my weight. Now, if you have met me personally and know my oldest daughter, you can picture me as a younger version of my kid - weight and all. Not skinny, but not portly, or chubby...just slightly husky. So imagine that, and imagine being teased from childhood through high school. Anyhow, I decided to give Drama a try in 10th grade. Not sure why, but I did. And in that very class was my arch-enemy from way-back-when; the girl who taunted me every day and rallied an entire bus and its bus driver to side against me. Needless to say, it was an uncomfortable class for me, but I did my best.

Enter...The Play...we decide to put on a play with Winnie the Pooh for an elementary school. I knew Pooh inside and out, but you can imagine that I DID NOT want to be Pooh in the play!!! I tried for Rabbit, oh please let me be Rabbit. And although I did a proper Rabbit in the tryouts, the teacher decided that I should try the role of Pooh. Lo and behold, I was the perfect Pooh (wouldn't you know it), and I was the lead role in the play. Ugh. But it was then that I realized, I was, indeed, Winnie-the-Pooh, and there was no escaping it.

Since then, I've accepted my Poohness, and have met many other characters from the 100 Acre Wood. A co-worker of mine was a classic Kanga - always had a motherly concern for others. I have met Rabbit - orderly, organized, keeping everyone in the know. Of course, there is gloomy Eeyore, and overly-energetic Tigger (the classic ADHD child). Piglet - kind of awkward and stuttering, but makes for a very good and faithful friend. Owl, who likes to store up knowledge and then share it with others (the non-stop talker). Christopher Robin - friend to everyone, and everyone is eager to please this person, or is eager to know his opinion.

So...who are you?

Weekly Report

This week the kids had VBS in the morning, and we did school in the afternoons. This worked out very well, as it kept the kids busy and occupied, and drove off boredom. I thought I was crazy for attempting afternoon-school, but as long as I had my act together, it went very well.

The kids went on an all-day field trip on Thursday with their AWANA group. They went to a children's museum, and then they played at a park. They released butterflies into the wild, did the hands on exhibits for a grocery store and pizza parlor, climbed on some structures, and made a craft. They had a lot of fun, and Mom had the whole day to clean by herself while the kids were gone (woohoo!).

The 7yo has started on the BJU Language Arts books, so that has been added in to our school day. Here's the schoolwork part of the week:

7yo:
Math (BJU 2): telling time to 5min intervals, half-past, quarter-after, and quarter-to
Reading (BJU 2): finished a story about a scarf, learned about dividing syllables and long vowels vs. short vowels, started a story called The Tuna Tangle and learned about onomotopeia. I have to add a note here: I always thought for "reading", I would just let the kids pick their own books and that they would be avid readers (etc, etc.) I decided this year to try a traditional reading textbook curriculum. My 7yo is so relieved to have a grade level reader that is assigned to her and then to know that reading is officially DONE, LOL. This is NOT what I ever envisioned for my kids, but if it works...I'm beginning to think that my "I hate school work" 7yo might actually do very well with bookwork and need some structure.
English (BJU 2): sentences - telling, command, exclamation, and question. Now the kids like to give commands and then let me know that it was a command sentence, LOL.
Spelling (Spelling Workout B): words with s, es, ing, and ed.
Handwriting: Finished Handwriting Without Tears Cursive. Next we'll practice writing spelling words.

5yo:
Math (BJU 1): place value and counting big numbers t0 200, and to 1000. Started subtraction.
Reading (BJU K): Like the Snow #24. Also reading books for the library summer reading program.
Phonics (Explode the Code 3): short words with a long vowel, short words with a -y, silent e.
Handwriting (without Tears 1): more than half way through the book, learned h and b.

Both:
Reading about the human body in science. Reading about missionaries in history, which we really don't like, so I'm doing a shortened reading through it. Finished The House At Pooh Corner. For Bible, we read the end of Jesus's life, his resurrection, and the day of Pentecost.

My Life in Pictures - Part 2 - The School Room

Because of the big hole in the ceiling, and nobody wanting to sit Under It (I don't know why...), we moved our table and homeschool workshop into the Formal Dining Room, which is a somewhat empty room, housing only a piano and a few other odds and ends. Well, it happens to make a Great School Room, and doesn't make too bad of a dining room, either. I have to say, this is the best School Room set up we've had yet. Notice the ladder in the background, where you can see the kitchen area? On the piano, I have 2 Priority Mail boxes set up and holding my school books. It makes a nice portable bookshelf system. And we don't have enough bookshelves anyway, so I had to Resort to using Other Things. Also, I have my Sonlight Map poster-puttied to the wall. Pretty neat, eh?
And here is the dining table where the children eat their dried bread crusts and then slave away through their schoolbooks, while I stand with a whip and laugh a wicked laugh. Just kidding. Actually, as you can tell, the kids have their drinks at the table, and are allowed to drink during lessons. Which is an incredibly Bad Idea and I Highly Recommend to All New Homeschool moms that they Don't Allow drinks at the table during lessons. Also notice the Lighting and how it Hides all the Junk that I didn't Put Away? That wasn't planned, but is a rather welcome side-affect to having the sunlight blind my photo taking efforts.
And if Blogger Co-operates, I'll try to get More Photos of Things Going On, at a later time.

My life in pictures - part I - The Bathroom Project

This series of posts is called My Life In Pictures. This post is Part One, The Bathroom Project.

Here is our dining nook/kitchen ceiling, before we decided to look at the plumbing behind the drywall.
And here is our dining nook/kitchen ceiling AFTER we decided to check out the plumbing behind the drywall. Lately, we cut it into a nice neat (although larger) square, so it doesn't look so...uh...hangy down-y and dangerous, if you know what I mean.
Here is the culprit...that dastardly bathroom tile floor and seat. We think the water was pouring in through that seat. I really wish now that I had taken pictures of the demolition process. It looked like a war zone. We needed little toy army men to stand in there and make it look like a destroyed city. I've been watching too much Halo...
And this is what our bathroom Hopes to Be When It Grows Up. (Notice the A.A.Milne style capitalized letters to show Importance. We just finished reading the House at Pooh Corner, and it has influenced me and made me a Better Person). The bathroom walls aren't really attached yet; they are just standing there for effect and looking pretty. The real trick will be getting them glued in there without Further Problem.
Stay tuned for the next Installment of My Life in Pictures...

A Playful Parenting critique

Stopping in for a brief post...
With all the computer work I have been doing lately, I have been listening to Dr. Ray Guarendi from The Dr. Is In Catholic radio program. He is a homeschool dad of 10 and psychologist. From his broadcast on May 8, 2008, he talks about "playful parenting". It is within the first 5mins of his hour long show. After my own reading and experience with "playful parenting", I enjoyed listening to Dr. Ray's critique of the method. Here is the link:

http://avemariaradio.net/archiveListen.php?file=di_20080508

By the way, if you happen to know of other good things to listen to on the Internet while I work, please post a link in my comments:) I specifically would like to listen to broadcasts about homeschooling or parenting.

I am almost finished with my work...a few more days and I hope to begin tackling our mountains of unattended laundry.

Weekly Review - of sorts

I am still amongst the living. We've kept ourselves really really busy! I have lots of great photos to post, but haven't had the time to post them. Here is a short "what we've been up to" post:

• Planted a small garden & a strawberry patch
• Cut out a chunk of our kitchen/dining room ceiling to try to assess a plumbing problem in an upstairs bathroom. The dining and school area has moved into the "formal" dining room (which was an empty room, until now).
• In the process of tearing out our bathroom shower, the source of the problem (a major leak in the floor - plumbing appears to be OK). Lots of exciting photos of demolition and destruction. It looks like a war zone in there. Stay tuned.
• The brakes on our vehicle went bad. I had a free $5 gift certificate to Starbucks that I didn't think I'd ever use, and I had my copy of Story of the World 2. So I spent 3 hours sipping a frappacino at Starbucks while reading SOTW 2, and had a very nice time! I highly recommend SOTW 2 - what an awesome book!! Can't wait to start it!
• I started on a giant web site for a long-time customer (wonderful people to work with!) and have been very busy with this project.
• The 7yo lost her 2nd tooth, so now she is adorably toothless on top. Again, need to post a photo.
• The 7yo went to a baseball game at a big stadium with her daddy and had a great time!
• We had beach day with our homeschool group. Wonderful but exhausting day.
• The 7yo went to a day camp with her AWANA group - this was a reward for finishing up the Sparks program. She had a great time - lots of good photos. They met Sparky, and sent up rockets, had ice cream, and got a free T-Shirt.

For some reason, I think I'm missing something...But now I need to get back to work!

Weekly Review

Our week was mostly fun & games. Here's a review:

Saturday: put in a garden (a small one) - this will be our science & dinner.
Sunday: put a big whole in our dining room/kitchen ceiling to check for plumbing problems. Kids learn how a house is built. Then, spent the day with great-grandma, helping her around the house.
Monday: all serious schoolwork. 5yo: in math; tens & ones, expanded form (53=50+3), counting to 100. Reading - worked on reading -ing words & silent e (long vowel a) words. 7yo: math; writing fact families, spelling; or, er, ir, wor words, grammar; -er and -est words, handwriting; more cursive capitals. Reading; Tiara Club
Tuesday: kids scrambled to get math & basics finished before the movie. 5yo learned odd/even with large numbers (63, 54), greater than/less than. 7yo learned more of the same as Monday. Saw Prince Caspian at the theatres with our homeschool group. It was a private showing and very nice.
Wednesday: 5yo learned counting & skip counting on a number line, hit a brick wall with number patterns. More of the same with reading (-ing, silent e words). 7yo: more of the same. 7yo finished Grammar - Woohoo! At night: character club (a summer long class that replaces AWANA).
Thursday: got an oil change - kids got to see the men working underneath the cars, and saw that some girls work at the place, too! Went to piano lessons. Then we visited a friend that lives near our lessons - spent a few hours playing. I swapped homeschool books with our friend: got the SOTW 2 books we need.
Friday: another full (hot) day. Went to TBall (last day) at 10am. Went home & rode our bikes up to the garage sale down our street. It was 88 degrees this morning, and in the 90's today. Our BJU books arrived for the 7yo and Explode the Code 3 for the 5yo.

Next week we are taking a break from the school books (as promised when that grammar book was finished). We will focus on our Sonlight books & science.

I sold my books

I sold my Sonlight Core 1 books today. I was depressed all day yesterday, and wondering if I was doing the right thing. I tossed and turned all night last night and had dreams about selling it. Originally, I was going to save all of my Sonlight books. We'd have a full library. The books sat in a box, and as I kept kicking the box out of my way everyday, I began thinking about sticking the box in the attic. At the thought of putting the box in the attic, I started to think about the humidity, and dust, and bugs, and anything that might degrade my beautiful books over time.

I met the person buying the books. I actually knew her from somewhere. After talking with her for awhile, I realized how happy I am to have sold the books to her. The books are going to a good home. The books will be used, and read, and loved - and then maybe even passed on to another family in another year or two.

Maybe that is the sign of a good curriculum: when you can't sleep from the thought of selling it!