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Today started with swim lessons (teacher double-booked, so didn't wind up happening), then we were off to park day creek stomp. It was so much fun! The entire drive over, Connor was talking about how he really didn't care much for creek stomps and how he'd rather just play on the bank or go for a walk, etc. We got there and he changed his mind immediately. There was a slight drizzle of rain off and on, but it was still perfect. Not too hot, not too cool, and the creek wasn't too deep (unlike last time). Ben was obviously exhausted, but he still had a great time. :) Some of their best friends attended and I think everyone enjoyed the time.
Tomorrow we are supposed to head for Kokomo Beach with friends and family, but it looks like the weather may not cooperate. To be honest, that would not an unwelcome change of events. We are tired and we have some school that we've been meaning to get done. Our first YSC experiment arrived and tomorrow would be a great day to get going on that. Did I mention that Connor read through his grammar book in one sitting? One. As soon as they talked about the eight parts of speech, he wanted to know what each one did...so he kept reading. And reading. And reading. Yeah. Unfortunately, I'm not certain much of it sank in. We'll find out soon, when we get to start it all over again. ;P But hey, he loved it the first time through...that counts for something, right?
Oh! Before I forget, Ben said something to one of my friends today that she thought was hilarious. The boys were hopping from rock to rock across the creek and Ben squealed, "It's a good thing we can balance better than snakes! Right, Liam?" *lol* Ummmmm...okay. :)
Okay...I'm exhausted and all lava-lamped, plasma-ed, and evolution-ed out for today. :P
-currently into plasma (think matter, not blood).
-wanting to build/run a lemonade stand and charge $5-10/glass (I'm torn between not allowing him to do this and letting him fall flat on his face...but I don't need any more crap from my neighbors, if ya know what I mean).
-reading anything having to do with lightning and/or magnetism.
-still watching Time Warp Trio and most anything to do with history.
Ben is--
-reading quite a lot, but still prefers a lot of pictures (in color) despite enjoying the stories in chapter books better.
-so excited about getting a guitar for his birthday he can hardly stand it.
-swimming really well! (That fear of putting his head under water came out of nowhere two years ago--before that he was fine.)
-fascinated by Benjamin Franklin.
-making leaps and bounds in math lately, without much help/direction from me (I could tell he was beginning to get frustrated, so we're technically taking a break).
-Ben decided to be a handful (*cough, cough*) during his swim lessons. Jill's patience was wearing thin and I've NEVER seen that happen before. :P
-We went straight from there to park day, which was wonderful. Some of my favorite people were there and it was the perfect weather and location for the kids to run around with their friends.
-Went straight to the allergist following park day and Ben was phenomenal. Just so calm, so patient, etc. Unfortunately, he began to react very quickly after the prick, and his is still listed as a "severe allergy". *sigh* He began sobbing when it started to react. :( ( I think he feels left out more than anything...)
Today we went to the Indy Children's Museum with my folks--it was soooo crowded. Despite that, it was such a good time! I've always taken them to children's museums and things, but now they are at this great age where they REALLY interact with the exhibits. Connor was asking interesting questions (when I was with him, anyhow) and Ben just seemed to get so much more out of it this time around. I'll have to post more later because right now, I am going to go put my feet up for a bit.
Hope everyone has a happy and safe 4th! :)
We have read every children's version of King Arthur's legends available in two libraries. By the middle of this last one, I was ready to stare into the sun for long periods of time in hopes of blinding myself. ;)
Ben was telling my friend K about it today at the river stomp. She said, "So are the books all about the same?" Ben replied, "Oh yes, but some have really nice pictures and other ones are more boring. But they all end the same--one guy draws his sword to kill a snake and starts the last battle, then Arthur goes off in a boat to be healed and to wait until the world needs him again." Ben then turns to me and asks, "Are there more books about it in other libraries?" NoooooOOOOOOooooo! *lol* But I didn't scream, I just said, "Well, I don't know--feel free to look next time we're in a different library." :D
Oh, and we've read all the children's books on Robin Hood, too. Thankfully, there weren't quite as many of those. :-)
PT finally wrote back and acknowledged my email; she will be finding someone new immediately. Our summer suddenly looked oodles better :)
We spent yesterday at the neighborhood pool with my mom. I burned pretty badly, despite SPF 45. :P My bra is a medieval torture device today.
Mom decided to take the boys home with her for the night, so this morning I'm going to go through and try to figure out how to get through this mound o' curriculum. The cool part is that Connor is very excited to start in on all of it with the exception of Wordly Wise. But he likes words, so I thought we'd try it and if he doesn't like it, we'll just put it away for a while. It's important to me to keep the child-led feel to homeschooling. Anyway...
This week we'll find out if Ben is still allergic to peanuts--he's so excited! I hope (for so many reasons) that he's outgrown that. I'd bet almost anything that he has, but you just never know. So we'll do the test and if he's negative, we'll get to come back in for a supervised sampling of something with peanuts. He hasn't had any kind of reaction since that very first one (head to toe hives after *touching* PB at the age of nearly 20 mos), so I think we might get very lucky and find out he's outgrown it.
Well, the past few weeks have been crazy around here... it'll be good to no longer have the stress of little Z added to the mix. :)
So far, we *love* Latin for Children. The chants are catchy, the DVD lessons are really well done, and the Activity book seems to be quite engaging--dare I say, "fun"?! I will admit, though, that the chants are a bit fast--if you didn't already look through the book and/or watch the DVD lesson, I'm not entirely sure you'd catch the subtle differences in the conjugations. Regardless, it's a great program so far. The kids and I were humming/singing "Amo, Amas, Amat ... " all afternoon.
I am still anxiously awaiting the box from Amazon. *sigh*
Oh! and to any of you using (or thinking of using) Singapore math, they are no longer publishing the Challenging Word Problems books. We *love* those books. I don't think the program is the same without them, honestly. No word on whether they will replace the CWP with similar books somewhere down the road... The good news is that the IP books are not in jeopardy. Yet. :P
*sigh*
I woke at 4am with a migraine. So glad the boys have camp today... but I have to admit that this is far more work than I imagined it would be. Hopefully they'll want to go again next year (so far, it's been a great experience for them), but I won't go into it thinking "woo hoo--free mommy time!" as I did this time around. :-) It's crazy how much stuff they ask them to bring! Oh, and I'm having to wash all of C's stuff every night because so far, they have gone swimming/canoeing/tubing in the pond/river every single day. And pond water STINKS.
Anyway. They're having fun and I am getting a break in the middle of the day, so all's well.
Okay, well, the boys are up and asking for breakfast!
Btw, does anyone here use Singapore math? If yes, do you find it is based on a 36-week school year? How many lessons do you complete per week and how do you work in the IP and CWP books?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kari-henle
I took my car to get a much needed bath and vacuuming, as well as a bit of running around, then began the enormous task of reorganizing all our homeschool materials. I am a visual person and I need to have stuff visible, otherwise I will forget what all is available to us. And because I have forgotten - on many occasions - what is available to us, I have accumulated a lot of stuff from all the used curriculum sales and my late-night panic attacks over <enter subject here> which led to over-spending at B&N many times in the last 17 mos in an attempt to leave no stone unturned in our quest for knowledge. :P (Which, in my rational moments, I fully understand is impossible...I am not always rational, however.)
Well, I just ordered most of our stuff for the next year and that means I have to clear out some of this clutter. So that's my big goal for this week...and trust me, it is a lofty one.
Last, I won't lie to you: those 6 hours of freedom were sweet. A friend said, "You get a taste of what it would be like to have both kids in school all day". I did, indeed. And I now understand my one friend's reaction when I decided to pull them out...it was something along the lines of, "Are you crazy?! You're so close to them both being in full time! It's a different world!" *lol* No regrets, though. :-)
http://brooketaylorbooks.blogspot.com/20
Seriously...one of the funniest things I've read in a long time!
Last week was insane. We did TKD 3 or 4 nights and on top of that had swim lessons Tu & Th, piano lessons Wed (with an impromptu park day with friends shortly thereafter); Friday we had...well, something during the day, the kids' first Fight Night (TKD) in the evening, and Saturday was belt testing (both passed--yay!) with a visit from my folks. Yesterday the boys went swimming despite Ben getting sniffly and last night was crazy in and of itself--Bill was at a Boy Scout planning meeting and the kids and I played outside for about 2.5 hours. We read the rest of our Robin Hood story while outside and toward the end of the book, Connor saw a reflection of a hot air balloon in our sliding glass door--when we all turned around, it was right behind our fence, about 40ft up! The boys were thrilled :) I ran in and got binoculars as it started to float away and the kids were so into the binoculars, I couldn't believe it. We wound up trekking around the field out back for about an hour, looking at all sorts of things through the new "toys" :) (The thing that cracks me up about that is we've used them before and they couldn't have cared less...*lol*) They especially liked looking at the moon through them. Connor watched several different birds and that was neat, too--Connor likes to try to identify them and Ben was attempting to mimic their sounds (which he was quite good at, whether or not he realized it).
Oh! I found a couple of those "rocks" that are a rusty orange color and very soft--used to find them all the time as a kid and loved to draw on sidewalks with them. Anyhow, I found a few while we were in the fields, gave them to the boys and mentioned that they've always reminded me of cave drawings. When we got to a sidewalk, they both started drawing. Connor drew a large cat and Ben drew flowers and plants. Connor drew his very similar to what we saw in a recent Cave People book and told me that he was drawing a cat for the same reason the cave people did--so he'd have some magical powers over cats (he wants one so badly, but Ben and Bill are allergic). What's cool about this is every once in a while, I wonder if Connor is really paying attention when I read to them and then he'll catch me off guard by pulling out the most obsure piece of information from a book we've read and I wind up astounded. :) Ben was pulling out facts left and right, too. It was a wonderful evening :)
Then, right at the end of our great evening, Connor got something in his eye. I rinsed it a dozen times and he was still telling me that it hurt really bad. I couldn't see anything, though! After 30 mins (9:30), I finally called Bill and told him I needed his help--I thought for sure we were headed for Urgent Care. Meanwhile, Ben took a serious turn for the worse and was whining, begging for medicine and food, and wanted all my attention. It was easily 10pm before they got to bed and Ben apparently woke several times in the night. Connor woke this morning with a fever, and Ben is fairly miserable with a cough, runny rose, and sore throat. *sigh* Oh, and Connor had a nice sized piece of dirt stuck up under his eyelid--Bill got it out with a Qtip drenched in saline.
Care to guess what's happening today? Yeah. I started my "baby sitting" job. *groan* So far, they all three get along fantastically (*knocks on wood*), but I have a migraine I can't get rid of (had it since yesterday) and I have a long 5 hours ahead of me.
I will have to tell about Ben's Nudist Adventures later, I'm afraid. Computer + migraine = bad. :P
I think I'm finally done obsessing about homeschooling for the time being . At least, as "done" as I can ever be. :P
I still want to keep a relaxed feeling and still want most things to be child-led, but I'd feel a whole lot better if we had some direction with grammar and writing, which is why I'm being so incredibly picky about which program we use--it must at least feel laid-back and "fun"(ish). And after a long talk yesterday, the kids apparently really want to continue Latin, but not with Latin's not so Tough (they both called it "boring").
Born With A Bang
From Lava to Life
Mammals Who Morph
(all by Jennifer Morgan)
My question is, are they worth the money? I have searched every library within 40 miles and can't find them (imagine that...we had all of half a dozen books TOTAL on evolution).
--Bill took boys swimming (I mistakenly thought the water would be too cold, but they all told me it wasn't). This was great.
--We meet some families at a local park for a BBQ (a few HSers, a few not). Good food, great company, and the kids had a *blast* running around with all those other kids...so this, too, was great.
--We then went to Astronomy Night. It was cloudy. The kids were exhausted. It didn't start until a few mins after their normal bedtime. This did not go over very well. From now on, we'll probably skip the nights when the weather isn't cooperating, but I do think they'll enjoy gazing through the telescopes on nights when we are able to do so.
Today we went up to visit with my folks and had a BBQ (my sister's family was supposed to be there, but apparently they woke up sick today). Once again, we had a really good time. We got to play frisbee, the kids LOVED playing catch with Ollie (their border-collie mix), and while we didn't get around to playing kick ball, the kids loved the homemade ice cream. :)
***
Connor is now into human evolution, which has led to many interesting conversations. He read a book this morning about scientists extracting some mtDNA from a Neanderthal bone and was asking if we could somehow "grow a Neanderthal" so that we could "watch him go through evolution to answer some of our questions about that".
All of a sudden, Ben is making so much progress in math--he's getting really comfortable with the numbers and he's excited to start playing our math games again. Depending on the weather tomorrow, we may be 'back to school' to get some stuff done before our schedule explodes with commitments.
And now...time for sleep. :-)
I'm hoping to rest up tomorrow so we can enjoy tomorrow night (BBQ with friends at a park and then "Astronomy Night" at a different, but nearby park).
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
