Homeschooling Check-In Part 3

[HeatherlovesCDs]

Jen - Glad you looked ahead. I'm sorry you feel so yucky today. We all have days like that and we all get frustrated. Don't beat yourself up about it. I never answered your question about the "extras." I bought the deluxe package. My kids really enjoy the Come Look With Me Art books. We don't do them weekly, but they enjoy it when we do. In fact, I'm thinking about buying one more of them, the animal one. Zack would love it. I want to do the music, but we haven't. We have done a little bit of the Drawing with Children book, but not much. We just don't have time for the extras. We barely get in the basics. LOL. What of the extras do you do?

KaiMom - Hi again! Sounds like fun. I have no clue why, but I love pumpkins, learning and reading about them and cooking with them and looking at them. Hence me going to the pumpkin patch when my newborn was still less than a week old.

AFM - We finished everything today, Bible, reading, phonics, and math. I would have preferred to do a little more math and we did skip on phonics activity. But, still I'm feeling good about it. Starting to realize I might be able to handle a newborn and school. My 2.5 year olds are still the biggest problem.

[cedavid2011]

We only got the bare minimum basics done today. DD4 had her 1 year check-up this morning and my mom was home with the 4 oldest trying to get them to do their school work. They had typical Monday attitudes so it was slow going for her. Then this afternoon we had our monthly chiropractic appointment for everyone. So we are going to hit the books hard tomorrow. Right now they are playing card games with DH, so maybe that counts as some extra math. ;-) Hope everyone in the eastern part of the US is safe and warm tonight. We're praying for you all.

[2queens&1princenmyhouse]

We got in a full day too! Yay for being on track! DD2 invited a friend over and we had to pick her up at noon. I told DD2 that all her work had to be done before we left or we couldn't pick the friend up. She finished. Then the girls went to a local convent and raked leaves for the nuns, they said a rosary and then we all attended the hs potluck afterward (I couldn't go earlier-had to get the dc kids shipped back home ). I'm off to plan a little extra geography for tomorrow. Prayers for those on the east coast.

[tallanvor]

We survived the day, despite bad attitudes and whining. Didn't do as much with history as I wanted, but at that point I was just glad to get something done. DH gave me the afternoon off yesterday, and I felt rejuvenated last night, but today I felt as if I hadnt had a day off in months. It was weird.

[3boys_mom]

This week DH and I have decided we are going to take it easy. And by take it easy, that means we are doing the subjects the boys actually enjoy (history and science). And we're throwing in reading our chapter book for the oldest/ He needs to get through it. I can not renew it from the library anymore. We've have it since August. The goal was to read a chapter every school day. Well, we've had good days and bad with that. So here I am, pushing him to just finish the darn thing already. I'd like to move on.

We're getting hit pretty hard here. Lots of rain and heavy duty wind. No damage to our property, but two trees are down in our neighbors yard. Missed our cars by maybe four feet. We have some flooding, but we get that with any old storm. I'm headed to bed. Hopefully we will make it through the night without losing power.

[jen_batten]

Today went much better. I can't talk well, but I can talk. I just sound like an old man, lol. We did some review games this morning to practice all the new reading stuff they are learning. Then we took some advice off the fluency thread and I had them read the same book 4 times. I timed them each time, and for math we made a bar graph for our results. I thought it was very helpful for their reading, and they thought it was cool to get faster and faster each time. In the life skills category we made homemade yogurt for the first time. It turned out, and the kids loved it.

Heather--We have only used the Come Look With Me books a couple of times. I have trouble remembering them. We do use the Drawing with Children book--the kids LOVE it. They have started looking at things and telling me about which elements of shapes they see at random points during the day. The MFW book has had us do a few of the warmups but none of the real drawing stuff yet. I'm interested to see how it goes. I don't use the classical CD at all. We did a few times in the K curric, but I have trouble remembering it and caring enough about it to actually get it done. We use the pattern blocks to play with more than anything else, but we do one of the sheets with them every 1-2 weeks.

[foggierbard9]

yesterday and today were a bit rough to say the least. The hurricane meant that DH was home from work, and for whatever reason that made getting school done harder than it usually is. Tomorrow things should be back to normal and hopefully that means getting everybody back into our routine...hopefully.

[foggierbard9]

Jen - Thanks. We are going to get his eye exam scheduled just to be sure. I would rather be on the safe side. DH has an astigmatism and has glasses for that, and I got glasses in 1st grade and have really bad eye sight. We are just trying to spread out his reading/writing/copywork throughout the day until we can get his exam scheduled.

[cedavid2011]

Well, today was an ok day. We had one with a stomach bug over night, so I was up a lot between her and DD4 who was nursing a bunch. We did get some school in this afternoon and got to do a cool magnet experiment for science. All of the wind and rain hit us here too, but the power stayed on. I hope everyone is warm and dry today. Take care mamas!

[HeatherlovesCDs]

Jen - Glad to hear today went better. We were doing the Drawing with Kids and my kids really liked it, but it was too much prep for me once it wanted me to make grids and exercises to copy. I hate to say that, but I'm just not good with the prep right now. I don't think my kids were as into it as yours though because they didn't get into the elements of shape that much. I had to smile when you said you had a hard time caring enough about the music to do it. I feel the same way. My poor uncultured kids.

Foggier - We don't get much done when my husband is home either. I would think it would be easier since he could watch the other kids, but alas, it doesn't work that way. We are a state over from you. We didn't have any issues from the storm and didn't lose power either. I hope you didn't.

Corrie - Magnets sounds fun. Sorry about the stomach bug and I feel you on the nursing child since mine is only 2.5 wks old. Hope you have a better night tonight.

AFM - We got through everything. I feel like we aren't moving in math though. I haven't really had time to do anything good with him in math. I've just been picking out workbook pages and having him do them. He is getting addition down very well. Ha, ha! So, I need to work on moving him forward and doing more in math. Other than that though, he is coming along. I can't wait till he decides to start reading outside of school time. Our families both think he can't read because he doesn't read. He can read. He just chooses not to because it isn't easy for him. He still has to sound everything out and is fairly slow at it. He complains whenever I ask him to read something himself. But, he CAN do it. Gotta run......