Reading blogs use to be helpful

I use to find it helpful when I first got into blogging. I began at homeschool blogger but like many others made my way to this provider. I was discouraged by the other site's times that the blog was not available or other glitches.
I did find others on that provider that through their experiences I would learn more about homeschooling. But this provider all I am discovering more and more business blogs. Sure the products are nice but many are focused on the early learner and my girls are past most that I see. I rarely get a glimpse into what others are doing to overcome a struggle or to celebrate their accomplishments.
I am a very busy woman and even with my busy life I wonder how the bloggers who put so much up for giveaways and such manage to teach their children. A blogging business is timely. 

On another note I do believe we will get into the swing of school again. Yesterday ended up being another day of appointments. Baby O had to go for a weigh in as he is down to 6lbs 3 oz but on the up side he has been feeding well for the past two days and I expect he will stop loosing. My daughter K has a wound infection and had to see the doctor as well. 

We did make some Christmas crafts later in the day and the girls decorated a small tiny tree for our lesson room. I look forward to moving on again with school.

I wonder what others do to get through these type of days. I am now at 21 days behind my schedule. Looks like some Saturday classes will take place come January and February.

So now we have to get back to some lessons

Seems we have been having more of life lessons lately than core education lessons. That is fine of course but I am ready for the calm down.
Baby O was born on 11-20-2011 and is a healthy boy. Mother K is doing well but had a rough way to go from the beginning of this pregnancy to the end. G and F have been clearly making their adjustments and I no sooner announced to them that we could get back on track with school when suddenly an "appointment' came up. OH NO they tell me, thinking we could calm our days a bit.

We have not been in any class for ten days now. This is going to come as a hard one for them as we will be going well in to the summer months to catch up what is now twenty days. I expect Saturday classes to be necessary. Then again, we did decide that we were interested in a break that was a bit into the fall so perhaps that is a natural way to fall into our next  school year schedule.  hehe the pun was intended

Plans for this upcoming week will be more work on our dinosaur lapbook at our KTM format. The girls are really looking forward to this when they realized that there is an appointment with the pediatrician on Monday. No problem as we all ready know that we can do some of this lesson in a car.

We got a cute small tree to put in our classroom and some craft items to make ornaments for the tree. I imagine we will do that Monday as well. Today we went to the Santa parade and the girls were filled with Christmas Spirit.  They told many people Merry Christmas as they passed them on the sidewalk. It became contagious as it was not long that others expected it from them as they passed and initiated it on their own, only to see them passing it on down the road. It was a great day! I really needed it.  The stress of the past week mixed with the excitement and lack of sleep turned me into someone I really do not know well at all.
Feeling revitalized I am excited again to face each day. It has been a rough week and to be honest it is a good thing that we did not get lessons completed as my teaching ability really has been impair during a stressful week.

So next week I will move on with F in her reading as we slowed down for her to catch up a bit with the many new special sounds of phonics. G will move on in spelling and oddly is enjoying all her capitalization rules and finding the errors in a sentence. Our last math class with G was a test day and she did great!

I really do not have much to post about but think next week I should be ready with pictures of the dinosaur study.

Finally a moment to make a post!

What a whirlwind life is sometimes. By the time I get a moment to keep up the blog I am too tired from all of life experiences lately. So it would seem that there is no time for school...but we are still making progress and learning goes on.

G is enjoying math a bit more, it seems we are getting into some newer ideas mixed with the old. She seems to like creating graphs and tally marks.  As we are going places we make a choice of what I want her to observe and she is keeping her tally marks then making her graph.  There is so much available for her right now to enhance her learning and I struggle to keep up with her.  Soon the St. Louis Magic House will have a special exhibit on three of the Magic Tree House books. Additionally another local museum has a homeschool day coming up that will focus on the Civil War. She often asks me what the Civil War was about as our Tennessee heritage home is near Fort Donnelson and so she has been exposed a bit anyway. So today I think I will have her begin reading her Magic Tree House books out of order so she is better prepared for the Magic House display. 

I need to decide if we are going to attend the other museum program on Monday or not. Their baby brother will be born on Wednesday, his due date is actually 12/3/11 but he has been a challenge and it is time for him to stop. 

F has had her birthday and enjoying a new swing set that many tossed in their cash to make it possible.  She has been a classroom challenge lately and I am thinking it has more to do with the baby coming than her core. We has slowed down her phonics a bit as she knows it for the moment but I do not see it being retained like her basic phonics was. So I am probably going to see her working well into next year with her first grade phonics and language (remember she just turned 5).  I want to see her become a strong speller and reader so we will take it as she can handle it.  I love to see her blossom. The other day she made a shopping list and spelled it all herself.  Her list included celery which she spelled  s-l-r-r-y  sure she was far off but I could read it and knew what she wanted. :)

It seems I had so much I wanted to say and since sleep is not in the cards for me I thought I would type out a post but now I discover that my thoughts are rambling and my concentration is poor.  Some days I am more like my students than I care to admit.

We did get started on our KTM dinosaur study yesterday and it was a huge hit. We did some at the kitchen table but much of it was in the back seat of the car while we managed hospital appointments and other baby preparations. This unit is going to be fun but I need to get moving on it as we are also going to the Butterfly House with two of their friends in December to see the thousands of Paper Kite Butterflies that they expect.  I want to do a KTM on a butterfly too. 

K will deliver Owen on Wednesday on way or another. They will attempt to change his breech presentation and then induce or they will take him via c-section. Either way my newest grandchild will be here tomorrow.  K is feeling disheartened as nothing is working out the way she had planned it. I know how she feels but also know that God has His way of reminding us who is in control.  As her mother I do believe she is getting a valuable lesson in this pregnancy and I thank Him for that.

This week is the last day of the semester for Lyceum enrichment classes. It has been a good time!  However, my car was broken into and the dirty thieves took the boxes that held my lesson material and lapbooks for my class. So the project that my 4-6 year olds have been working on have been taken and they do not have anything to show for their efforts.  It is a sad thing indeed.

On a final note, we are indeed blessed with lots of love and joy in our home. We may struggle for other things from time to time but we are never short of love and encouragement.

Back in the lesson room

After what seems like a month long absence from our lesson room we had an uninterrupted week there. Huge accomplishment!  No one was sick and while K remains on bedrest / limited activity we were able to move on with our lessons.  I have been experiencing a "difficult " child though.

F turned five years old on Halloween.  She has been a challenge of wills for a few weeks as it is. Today she did not want to do her math book work and all though she was being a stink about it I did not let on that she was making things hard on me and creating a negative feeling. I took down the balance and bear and the play shapes.  Next thing you know I was telling her good thing as I thought she would like to do math with shapes. We worked on halves and wholes as well as names of different shapes and how to create the shape using other shapes.  She spent about 40 minutes non-stop playing math.  Not like she won't get to that page. Still the silent worrier in me thinks she is becoming a willful child and I raised one of those all ready. It is a very ugly task to get through that will without breaking the child. 

I know that some of the change in F is about the new baby coming but it has always been within her.

G is really enjoying all her language arts lessons. Reading has been fun. She asked if she could begin to read the bible so I added the book that comes with the curriculum--they call it the Bible reader.  She loves doing her journal. I plan to get her through more self expression before I get firm about her sentence structure. We are nearly through capitalization rules and then will move onto comas.  Within the next two weeks I will require better use of the rules of language she is learning. Right now I seek expression and she is doing great. 

G got a little upset with her math at the end of lesson today but she has been doing really great in math.  What a big difference it has been. 

Our plans for next week will include a morning at the Magic House on Monday but the rest of the week will be typical and I hope to see a lot of progress. 

We got news this week that their public school has failed and the state is likely to take over.  So many people are stopping and asking me about home school or telling me what a great choice we have made.

As for baby O, well he is still in and breech. We will meet him in three weeks if he does not come on his own but I will be surprised if K get the natural birth experience she was seeking with this one.  All is ready for his arrival!