Monday, Monday

I used to HATE that song. I thought it was such a lame song, until...we watched this PBS special on the Mamas & Papas. After hearing them talk about the song and watching them perform it, I was a sudden fan of the song. Today, the song seemed to hit the right notes for me. First, it was MONDAY. Second, I was tired and my head was in a fog. Third, it was COLD - we woke up with snow on the ground, and the fire had died out in the fireplace. Fourth, the kids seemed to be in the same funk as me, which doesn't help when I'm trying to motivate the three of us.

We spent a lot of time out on couches and chairs, wrapped in blankets, complaining. It was not a good way to start the week. We all couldn't decide whether we wanted to go back to bed for an hour or just hunker down and get schoolwork done. We spent a lot of time in this in-between world of indecision, trying to figure that all out. When we did finally decide to get schoolwork done (instead of napping), lots of complaining ensued anyway. The day was full of "do I have to?" and "but it's not fair". I'm sure there are subjects I forgot to insist upon doing. My goal originally was to make today look a lot like Friday, which was so completely productive and beautiful. On Fri, the kids got a jumpstart on school while I made breakfast. School went without a hitch, and we finished everything (including Science & History) by 11:30am. It was so productive, Daddy saw the whole thing and thought kids should do more schoolwork, LOL. I convinced him that being this productive should have it's rewards, and we should encourage this everyday!! Monday was a sad comparison, and yes...the yellow schoolbus did come to mind.

The Week Ahead...

The week ahead doesn't have too much stuff on it, but as we approach April, we get all of our activities revving up in order to come to an end. April is always crazy for that reason.

I've decided not to sign the girls up for homeschool soccer this Spring. Practices run Tues & Saturdays for 6 weeks straight, and happens to coincide with the last month of AWANA and co-op (Weds & Fri's). So we'd be running Tues, Wed, Fri, & Sat. Normally, I'd do it, but being 26 weeks pregnant? Nah! I'm hoping we can sign the girls up for 1-week Soccer Camp (usually at the end of July), which would sort of make up for missing homeschool soccer. I think the girls enjoyed the camp more last year than the practices, anyway.

Our week:
Monday: school & library
Tuesday: school
Wednesday: school & AWANA - it's Big Game Night and also we're picking up some friends to go with us. (The 6yo is trying to earn 3 jewels in 3 weeks - phew!!)
Thursday: school
Friday: homeschool co-op classes (2 more after this one!)

To Do List:

• Work on home business paperwork
• Continue to plan & advertise the Curriculum Sale for our homeschool group
• Dog needs to be groomed...desperately!
• Make recipe cards for the KinderArt class at co-op, print out & cut out
• Plan out 3rd gr Math, print off visuals, & punch out/organize cardstock manipulatives
• Laundry is overflowing. Should probably spend some time there, swimming in it.
• Crunch time for AWANA! Both girls are about 3 sections away from finishing their books. I'm torn. This will be the first year that we haven't finished our books. On the other hand, if we really, really worked extra hard, maybe we could make it in time? Do I want to kill ourselves over this? Hmmm....
• Organize the next two support meetings for our group. Need to finish making arrangements for our April meeting, also need to get the ball rolling on another high school meeting.

Weekly Review

We did Science this week, hooray! We learned about Acids & Bases in Chemistry, and tested different liquids by mixing with red cabbage juice. In the last photo, the cups aren't organized correctly, but we fixed this later on. One liquid did not get the right results: the antacid tablet in water should've turned green, but it stayed purple. Hmmm... Not sure if store-brand antacids work differently or not (although the package did say it compares to Alka-Seltzer).

The kids are shown below, washing the icky baking soda & antacid taste out of their mouths with some white grape juice.

The results

In History, we read about Marco Polo and the Silk Road to China.

3rd grade:

In Math, the 8yo is reviewing addition/subtraction strategies, but is also learning how 8 + n = 17 can be turned into a subtraction problem to solve for n (prealgebra). In Reading, she read a 4 day story about Queen Esther. She also practiced matching antonyms. In English, she learned about combining sentences and run-on sentences. Handwriting has been combined with Familiar Quotations; I let her copy her daily quotation in cursive handwriting instead of working in her workbook. She finished Spelling early this week, and I allowed her to use Thurs & Fri to experiment with various computer Typing programs to find one that she likes. So far, she's tried Mavis Beacon Jr. & SpongeBob Squarepants Typing. She's really having a cow over this, but I really think that if she could learn to type, it would solve 75% of our writing troubles. For fun, she has been reading the latest Rainbow Magic Fairies series that has just come out: The Petal Fairies.

1st Grade:

In Math, the 6yo completed the chapter and test on counting money with quarters. Now she's beginning the supplemental lessons on grouping pennies (early multiplication concepts). In Reading, she read a story about a boy afraid to play piano in front of his church. It had a nice moral ending about doing our best for God, and God being pleased with that. She also read a story about a disabled girl - so this was discussed frequently this week. I was thankful for this story, because it put some things into perspective for the 6yo. She had been afraid of a disabled man at the library, and the story helped her to understand him better, and to no longer be afraid of him. She's cruising along in Handwriting - when she finishes 1st gr, I'll move her on to cursive, which she is eager to learn. In Spelling, she had some trouble remembering the -ow and -ue endings on her spelling words. Vowel combinations are tricky for little ones. In English/Phonics, she learned about special place names starting with a capital letter. She is also practicing antonyms and synonyms. For fun, she is delving into the Rainbow Magic Fairies Petal Fairies books, and has read through at least one of them this week. I'm quite impressed! She refuses to read one of the books because it has "scary words". I'm not sure what that means, LOL.

Tonight they are at a sleepover, and Mommy & Daddy have the house to themselves. Yay!

Monthly Checkup

Today was my 25 week checkup. The baby's heartrate was 156. I woke up Sunday morning with a lot of water retention (puffy ankles, feet, hands, etc.), which has caused me a bit of panic (that's how my pre-eclampsia started last time). This time, we're thinking it may have been from the giant shin-dig at Sat night's book club. Pizza, chips, pop...lots of sodium and caffeine there! My blood pressure and protein levels looked fabulous, so no concerns yet...just a wait, watch, and see. This appt they started measuring my big belly. Next appt is in 2 weeks, and I'll get to drink that fizzy syrupy orange drink and have blood drawn. The dr mentioned maybe doing a pre-pre-eclamptic blood test along with it to see how things are going.

After the dr appt, we met friends at Burger King's playscape. We had lunch and the kids played. My friend had a bunch of baby stuff to get rid of, and she gave me some real treasures! Amongst the wonderful items were a Boppy pillow (yay! needed one of those!), a Medela Pump In Style (double yay! I wanted one of these gems for my 2nd born, but ended up renting a hospital pump instead), and a bunch of Avent bottles, which can get turned into sippy cups (another yay! since my kids still drink out of sippies & esp love the Avent ones, LOL). After that, we headed to the store to find Maternity Bras. My current maternity bras were saved from the last 2 kids and are barely hanging in there (key word: hanging. Sorry, couldn't resist!) One such bra has only 3 bare threads holding the shoulder strap on. I was just waiting for that embarrasing day when those threads decide to give...

It was a very good day, but now I'm tired. And since everyone loves deer pictures, here are some to amuse you. These are pictures of deer found grazing in our yard close to the house this evening...

Weekly Review

Here's our week!

History: finished reading Castle Diary. Science: to be honest, I kept putting off that trip to the store to buy items for our experiment.

3rd grade:
The 8yo worked through Challenging Word Problems in the back of her 2nd grade Math book, while waiting for the 3rd gr book to arrive. Began 3rd gr math today, review of 2nd gr. addition strategies. In Spelling, she studied oi/oy, ai/ay words. She scored 100% on the spelling test. She did a few pages of her cursive Handwriting workbook. In Reading, she read a story about David Livingston. In English, she learned about subjects and predicates. She finished reading/copying Old Testament quotes from Familiar Quotations and began on the Apocrypha (she reads 1 pg per day & copies 1 quote per day). For reading enjoyment, the 8yo finished reading Howladay Inn, the sequel to Bunnicula, and a pretty long novel to boot! It was almost 200 pages! I'm proud of her for taking this next step up in her reading:)

1st grade:
The 6yo is learning about counting money with quarters in Math. She completed 5 pages of Handwriting. She scored 100% on her Spelling test, with these words: book, look, brook, dress, press, bless, dresses, presses, blesses, said. Spellingcity.com exercises seemed to help her remember her words. In Reading, she read a story about Johann Sebastien Bach as a child. In English/Phonics, she practiced oi/oy, ou/ow sounds and learned au/aw.

Other: We had nice weather, so spent 2 days out-of-doors. Today we're watching The Sound of Music in preparation for a co-op class. Tomorrow we'll have homeschool co-op classes. The 6yo will be getting a fiddler crab. Tonight (Thurs), the 6yo has AWANA games practice (just for fun). The 8yo has AWANA games practice Fri night after co-op, and then the real official games on Saturday morning. I have book club Saturday night. Busy weekend!

Where are we going?

At this time of year, I start looking analytically at what we have done and where we are going, and what I hope to achieve in the years ahead!

For now, I am quite satisfied with:

BJU Math
BJU English: Grammar & Writing (although still pondering the writing portions)
BJU Spelling

Math is a nice mix of hands-on, concrete representation, and abstract. There aren't an overwhelming number of abstract problems in the workbook each day. English Grammar does well explaining sentence structure. We struggle through the writing portions, so this part has me scratching my head, but otherwise...a good program. Spelling has dictation sentences 2xs per week and the words are based upon word families with word endings (ex: dress, dresses).

Not as satisfied with:

BJU Reading
BJU Handwriting

Reading is fine for the typical "reading program", but I've always had my heart set on living books, classics, real literature! Looking ahead, I hope to transition to that, and may make that my goal for 4th grade (Winter/Spring of next year). I get tired of all the same story lines over and over again. And I really don't want to read about George Mueller one more time. Handwriting - there is nothing wrong with the handwriting program, since most handwriting programs follow a similar scope: poems, Bible verses, and historical facts are copied onto writing paper. This launches the 8yo into a fit (notice the recurring theme with writing, handwriting?). She much prefers fill in the blank handwriting pages. That "real literature" side of me keeps thinking I should assign something from a book to copy. And another part of me wonders at the usefulness of handwriting at all. I wonder if my 8yo would be better off learning to type! The 6yo is doing fine with 1st gr handwriting, and I have no complaints about this book.

Other things I've hit upon this year:
Science: Real Science 4 Kids PreChemistry - only on Unit 4, but love it so far. Ask me again at Unit 10!
Story of the World 2 - I think this has been a great book to transition to after Sonlight. I've been able to add in a few Sonlight titles as desired, but mostly just read through the SOTW 2 book. Next year, I think I'll get the audio CDs, so that the kids aren't dependent upon me reading everything. Eventually, I'd like the kids to read these books themselves.

Overall, I think I've done quite well choosing "boxed, textbook" curriculum for Math/Language Arts, and then choosing my own Science and History. This complements my personality: it allows me some creative room, but reigns me from being lost in a sea of possibilities, and gives me the structure that I need.

The Week Ahead...

Busy week! Last week, I completed the rough draft for a 96 page web site. I'll probably have some more work to do on it, once I get feedback. So here is next week's events:

Monday: School, need to go to the library, the 8yo has AWANA games practice 6-8pm
Tuesday: nothing, glorious nothing! But we'll do school & I should prep for Thurs & Fri (a lot to do!)
Wednesday: school, both kids have AWANA 6-8:10pm
Thursday: school (whatever we can fit in), 1pm meeting with homeschool support group leaders, the 6yo has AWANA games practice (her official games were cancelled but they are doing a special one just for the kids to have fun).
Friday: homeschool co-op classes all day, and then the 8yo has a pizza party & AWANA games practice at 5:30-8pm.
Saturday: the 8yo has her official AWANA games at a different church.

Besides that, I need to -

• communicate with web site customer and make any necessary changes, final publish
• pull together notes for Thurs' leaders' meeting
• pull together supplies for Movie Night class at co-op, including finding the Sound of Music on DVD instead of tape.
• pull together supplies for KinderArt class at co-op

Weekly Review

Short week! I had a 96 page web site to develop and kept everything else simple. Monday was a full day of school, only because the kids were being stinkers (the 6yo refused to get out of bed and the 8yo threw a screaming crying fit over math, and refused to even look at the page).

History & Science: skipped formal history and science. Kids read the "Strangest Things" books that we borrowed (Birds do the strangest things, Reptiles..., Animals...). Then the kids picked one animal to draw and write about.

3rd Grade:
The 8yo finished her 2nd grade Math book, hooray!! She scored 100% on the test. She has a few challenging word problem pages in the back of her book that we'll probably work on next week while waiting for the new books to arrive (the 3rd gr books are on backorder, unfortunately, so I may be printing stuff off of the internet before long). In English, she finished her descriptive paper. It worked well for her to narrate and I to write. And then each day, she would edit, and I would copy it over anew. On the last day, she had to copy the final piece.

1st Grade:
The 6yo finished the chapter on addition strategies in Math. She also learned about 2 part story problems. One story problem had me stumped, until I finally looked in the teacher's guide and realized that BJU had made a mistake in the workbook. She did several extra Reading lessons, because that is her favorite subject. I insisted on 2 days of English/Phonics, since she's so far ahead in her reading.

After our shortened day of subjects, the kids read books for an hour. This worked out well and gave me time to work on my web design project.

Poor widdle thing...

A frequent occurance at our house during school...(notice the ignored math book on the table beside her).
She came down with a headache and felt miserable. Here she is on the couch, cold cloth on her head. Can you feel the agony? Isn't it just heartwrenching?

You can almost hear the groans from this poor little child. I hope she survives. I hope she lives to do math again.

Wordless Wednesday - Haircuts

This last one escaped a "before" pic, so we'll have to content ourselves with just the "after" pic:

The Week Ahead...

I have a large web site to design for a customer next week, so any filler time will be spent doing that. The project usually takes me about 1-1.5 weeks to get the rough draft up there, and then another full week to get feedback from the customer and make corrections.

For school, I think we'll do 2 bookwork subjects, and then I'll have some independent assignments for the kids to work on: independent reading, independent writing, and a friend suggested nature studies - so if the weather is nice, I'll ship them outside with clipboard, paper, and colored pencils:)

Sunday: church, web site
Monday: school, web site, library, go visit my mom and get hair cuts (she's spending 2 days down here to visit, and leaves Tues morning)
Tuesday: school, web site
Wednesday: school, web site, pick up 2 of the 8yo's friends to take to AWANA with us (requirement for passing the next section), feed them all dinner, send them all off to AWANA
Thursday: school, web site
Friday: school, web site
Weekend: it would be great if I could finish up the rough draft of the site.

Sleeping arrangements

In my post here, I showed a photo of my 6yo sleeping in the hallway. Well, Daddy put an end to that two nights ago, by sending her back into her bed (we were both rather tired of stepping on her, stepping over her, and accidentally kicking her every time we got up). The first night went great. Last night, however, I was awoken by another "Moooommmm?" in the night. Another spider dream.

Desperate to get back to sleep, I ask her, "do you want to sleep in the hallway tonight?"

Her response, "no, that doesn't do anything. All that does is puts me in the hallway."

Yup, it just puts you in the hallway:)

So she slept on the couch downstairs, instead.

Weekly Review

Some of our schoolbooks are ending soon, so I'm scouring the 'net looking at my options. I do want to continue with BJU English, but do I want to invest in that bulky teacher's guide? And do I want to continue the writing portions, or try IEW? Part of me is itching to branch out in a different direction next year (real books! real writing! LOL). But with a brand new infant coming this July, I'm not so sure my spunky homeschooling spirit is going to feel the same way under the pressures of sleepless nights, poopy diapers, and endless nursing sessions. At that point, I may be grabbing the nearest planned-for-me book on the shelf, know what I mean?

Ok, 'nuf said. Here's our week!

Science: studying Acids and Bases (H groups and OH groups). Next week we'll have an experiment involving red cabbage juice;) History: read quite a bit in Castle Diary - learned about Leaches (aka doctors) and blood letting, Castle justice (being jailed and tried for crimes), and Meat (yuck, yuck, yuck!) So glad I don't have to eat blood sausage, their disgusting puddings, or anything else that came from an animal back then. Bleck!

3rd grade:
The 8yo is finishing 2nd gr Math, probably next week. She learned finished her chapter on Division, and started Chapter 19 with More Division. It's basic, picture based division to give them the overall concept (not the grueling from memory kind, which I'm sure will happen in 3rd gr math, ick). In Reading, she read a 4 lesson story, learned about alliteration, and syllable division. On her own, she's reading through Cam Jansen books at bedtime. She reads about 4 chapters per day. In English, we began the 3rd-to-last unit on similies and descriptions. We began writing a paper on an object, using discriptions. She choose her guinea pig to write about. I'm still not sure how to really teach her writing, to be honest. It's been quite a battle. This time around, I opted to write what she says. After we finish drafting and editing this work, I'll have her copy the whole thing over onto nice paper. Of course, I feel like I'm not giving her enough writing this way, and she feels like I'm giving her too much. In Spelling, she got 2 words wrong on her test, but her dictation sentences were perfect. In Handwriting, I've been cutting back on the amount of cursive copying while moving forward because its just so much. I realize other currics have kids copy poems in cursive, but I personally like short, easy handwriting (and I hate to hear all the complaining that goes along with longer writing passages). So there, I'm slacking a bit in the teaching of handwriting and writing.

1st grade:
In Math, the 6yo is reviewing addition strategies and fact families. She is nearing the end of her book (2-3 chapters left?). In Reading, she read a play version of the Gingerbread Man. She wanted to follow the recipe for baking our own, but I kept putting it off, because - who likes the taste of gingerbread anyway? I could envision us making a big batch and then hating the taste. I'd rather make yummy cookies!! She did her obligatory Handwriting lessons. In Spelling, she had a review chapter and got most of the words wrong (LOL), but her dictation sentence was beautiful. I don't take 1st gr spelling for a 6yo very seriously, so we'll just move on. In English/Phonics, she practiced words with ou/ow making the "ou" sound as in house, clown, and now G making the /j/ sound. I've noticed she is a very intuitive reader - she pretty much glances at words like "page" or "gem" and instantly reads them correctly, rather than trying to figure out that g makes the /j/ sound. On the flip side, she's been complaining about her eyes lately, so I may be taking her into a pediatric eye doctor soon. She's been reading some of Cam Jansen at bedtime, but I think this tires her out because it is quite lengthy.

Tomorrow: Homeschool Co-op! We're beginning to make plans for next year's co-op, and I love seeing what classes are on the horizon. The 6yo will be bringing home a tadpole. The 8yo will have AWANA games practice from 6-8pm. It will be a long, tiring day for her!!

Saturday: Halo 3 tournament/Gaming Day with friends. Gosh, I have a lot of cleaning to do!

Wordless Wednesday - messy bedroom

Addendum:

Apparently, the 6yo felt she needed to move out of her bedroom (what, too messy? Not enough room for you?). Here is her new bedroom, on the hallway floor:

Actually, the real reason for the move-out was "because of the spiders". Both my kids have bug nightmares, where they wake me up screaming in the night, thinking they have a bug in the bed. And no, I don't feed them codeine before bed (but don't think I haven't thought of it). The 6yo now believes that her wood frame bed and her thick blanket are bug magnets. And so, here in lies the 6yo...

It's made me realize something, though. We have 3 bedrooms in our house, and I know most people believe that should limit the number of kids. "Where are you going to put the other ones?" they ask. "You don't have a bedroom for them!" they might say. The hallway-as-bedroom works so well, that I think we could fit several more children in our home! We could probably fit 20 kids. Just line them in the hallway, along the stairs...stick a few in the basement. Hey, it works...

More Baby Name Websites

As the name hunt continues, so does my ever-growing list of web sites to visit. Here are some more:

WebMD has a terrific article on Baby Naming.

Baby Namescape, located at Our365.com, and referred by WebMD's article, is oh-so-much fun! You can look up a particular hospital and find out what people are naming their babies there. My little Z-ster was almost named Serenity back in 2002, when it wasn't very popular. But the name has zoomed up the charts and showed up as #2 at one of our area hospitals. So glad we didn't name her that! (And she is NOT a "Serenity" by any stretch).

I've mentioned Appellation Mountain before, but go there again and check out the other great blogs linked in the side bars. I'm quite addicted to baby name blogs. Some of these women I'd like to throw myself at their feet, pleading (tears streaming down my cheeks) - "Please, pleeeeaaase, name my baby!" I could do worse...

And because all of this hunting for a baby name increases my blood pressure to dangerous levels (the cause of preeclampsia last time, maybe?), I need a little comedic relief. So, then I head over to the completely non name related blog Cake Wrecks.

The Week Ahead...

Last week, I caught some sort of cold (runny nose/stuffy nose, sore throat, cough). Although I'm unhappy and uncomfortable with it, I'm just very thankful that it isn't the stomach flu. Stomach flu + pregnancy is just a nasty business, and one I hope not to experience this time around. As for the week behind me...I missed Book Club (we were reading Jane Eyre), and I also skipped church. We did our own little "house church" thing at home, with just the 4 of us. Sometimes those are nice to do, too.

Here is the week ahead:

Monday: school, library, and then I am hosting our Homeschool Monthly Support Group. Our theme this month is Crafting/Scrapbooking. I think I will dust off some of my scrapbooking paper from the closet and begin making little 4x6 size baby albums for the girls. We'll see how far along I get on that project idea!

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday: not much planned other than school and a massive cleaning project in preparation for Saturday. Kids have AWANA Wed night.

Friday: wow, busy day! Co-op until 2:35pm and then the 8yo has AWANA gym games practice from 6-8pm. Her team is going to be competing against other area AWANA churches.

Saturday: Gaming Day! We're hosting our quarterly Halo 3 tournament at our house. This time we'll have the benefit of an extra TV in our movie theatre that is under construction. I need to clean most of the rooms in my house for this. The kids' room and my bedroom should be clean so that the kids that come over can play video games upstairs or play with toys. At least 2 of the 3 bathrooms should get cleaned. And of course, all the major living areas - living room, dining room, kitchen. My husband also wants to have more drywall up, mudded, and painted in the movie theatre before the big event.