Reason #951

People often ask "Why do you homeschool? What lead you to that decision?" and I've got lots of answers. These range anywhere from the safety of my kids (they're decidedly less likely to get shot in my house) to the quality of their education (you can't beat one on one tutoring!) to the simple fact that I just love being around them and love being the one to flip those switches that make the lights come on in their brains. It's fantastic!

Then people pull out their big trump card. The SOCIALIZATION card!

"But what about socialization? Aren't you worried about that?"

I read an article today that my friend Sherri posted at JM and it happened quite close to where she lives. It made my jaw drop and made me stop and literally say a prayer of thanks to my precious heavenly Father who has blessed me so much that I am able to stay at home and do what I do.

Go on and read it for yourself. And then try to tell me that my kids are better off at public school.

5th Graders Allegedly Had Sex In Classroom

'Cause, really, I think my kids could do without that kind of socialization. Thanks.

Reflections on Math

We've been talking about math programs over at JustMommies lately, specifically Math U See, which is the program that we started using about two months ago. I know I've waxed poetic about this program before, but I really can't say enough about it.

So, I decided that I'd post one of my quotes from the thread. Because, hey, if you're gonna quote someone, why not quote yourself? (ha ha ha!)

"As for it being fun, I would say it is. Is it "fun" in that they give you 50 different ideas of how to learn your +8 math facts and your child comes away from their math lesson feeling like they've been at the circus? No. But I told my husband today that it just feels like it's not work at all. We watch the lesson on the DVD and we use the blocks and we do problems for 15 or 20 minutes a day and - BOOM! Two weeks later I can ask Reilly "What's 8+5?" and she says "13!" And I feel like I didn't have to do anything. And I NEVER thought that teaching math would feel that way for me, so it's like heaven."

I'm amazed, constantly amazed at the strides Reilly has made with math since we started MUS. I know that there are many parts of Alpha that we will skip because this level teaches shapes and telling time, which she knows, so I imagine we'll move onto the next level pretty quickly. But I'm just excited that she's understanding it and enjoying it.

As for Declan, here's a story about him. We were sitting on my bed this morning and I had Troy's computer on my lap. Declan looked over my shoulder and started saying, "Look! There's a K! There's a T! There's a U!" I realized that he knows every letter. He learned them all in a week. He's like a little sponge, and it all started with his Kumon mazes book!

Social Studies and Home Ec

Well, today was unschooling at its best. I know, I know, you're all saying to yourselves, "Ummm, Lisa? You keep having days like that. What's up with you? Are your kids actually learning anything? Do I need to call the truant officer?"

My kids are learning that if Mommy is surrounded by filth day after day, she gets cranky and crabby and when Mommy is cranky and crabby, she gets snappish, which makes everyone else cranky and crabby and thus starts the vicious cycle that can lead to Mommy losing her mind and ending up in the corner, moaning and rocking and sucking her thumb.

No, just kidding.

What really happened was that this morning I woke up and realized that it had been an eternity since my house had been really cleaned with a majority of the rooms looking good all at one time. So I told The Kids that we were going to work as a team (school lesson: social studies and teamwork) and help each other as we cleaned the house (school lesson: home ec.). Declan and I helped Reilly pick up and dust her room, then Reilly and I helped Declan do the same in his room. Both of The Kids helped me dust in the livingroom and wash windows in the livingroom and their bedrooms. Then they watched "educational t.v." (read: "LeapFrog Letter Factory" again, "Reading Rainbow", and "Between the Lions") while I finished up vacumming and doing the kitchen, and our bedroom. I gotta tell you, we may not have done much reading, but my sense of relief at having a clean house is worth it.

Note for the truant officer: We did math fact review on the way to the tag office. So there!

A Shout Out to My JM Friends

I know that, being the brilliant homeschooling mom that I am, I should be able to figure out EVERYTHING on my own. After all, I'm in my second year of doing this. I've taught my daughter to read, write, spell, blah blah blah...I can't even go on, I'm laughing so hard at myself!

I was a little freaked out when Declan started asking, day after day, to do schoolwork. See, I never did any official preschool with Reilly. She just learned as we did life. I honestly don't remember actually sitting down and teaching her the letters, at least not until kindergarten, when I realized that she knew the uppercase and not the lowercase letters. So I was a little but at a loss as to how to go about teaching Declan letters.

Well, I knew just where to turn - my friends over at the JustMommies homeschooling forum! The ladies over there rallied gave me tons of hints - websites for games and printouts, games that I can play, things like that. The best tip I got, however, was the video "Leapfrog Letter Factory" which is the worlds silliest cartoon movie that teaches each of the letters and the sounds that they make, using little mnemonics. The j's are jumping on trampolines, the h's are hot, the e's can't hear and say "Eeeeh?" Declan LOVES watching it and, as a result of seeing it several times this week, can now identify probably 10 letters and their sounds. Today I was doing a little bit of "reading" with him, just writing simple three-letter words on the white board and showing him how the sounds worked together.

It so much fun, watching him learn!

On a side note, Reilly loves the video just as much as he does! *snicker, snicker!*

Show and Tell - a.k.a. The Most Boring Entry Ever

Declan asked me this morning if we could do show and tell, so I obliged. I know it might seem weird, since it's really just The Kids, showing a toy that we've all seen before to...well....me and each other. But they really like to do it, and it's been awhile since they've asked.



Declan chose his Playmobil pirate ship and he could have talked for hours about how he liked it because it was a Christmas present and how Mama and Papa know what he likes and picked it out for him and showing off all the "features" - the deck, the cannons, etc. Reilly chose her American Girl doll (Kirsten) and said she liked it because she had gotten it from her Nani and it was really fun to play with and look at. It was fun!



We didn't do anything spectacular in school today, but I did take some pictures, mainly because I've not taken any "regular school" pictures in awhile.

I had Declan practicing cutting. I love how intense he looks in the middle picture!

And then how proud he looks in the last picture.

Here's Reilly, practicing her +8 math facts. It's funny how much more fun it seems to her to write the answers on the white board than on regular paper!

I just thought this one looked pretty. She's doing a page in her Map Skills book.

Oh, and this was Supey while we were doing Show & Tell:

I'm sure he's thinking "My Peeps are so WEIRD!"

Trouble Concentrating

I think it has something to do with spring in the air, or maybe it's short-timers disease as we creep closer and closer to the end of the school year, but I'm really having trouble staying focused with school. I felt very frazzled today and unprepared, even though I had plenty of things for Reilly to do. I found myself really picking at her for silly things. For example, I've been having her use her spelling words in a sentence, and today I was really being critical of the length of her sentences, trying to get her to write longer sentences. And I should know that forcing her into things like that is only going to wind up in a fight.
Luckily, though, I did have the presence of mind to quit that exercise and move onto something else before it got too bad. I think the problem stemmed on her end from the fact that she heard me on the phone, inviting her friend Sophie over to play, and that got her all verklempt and excited and she couldn't concentrate. We moved onto math, but that wasn't going to well either, so we ditched everything and came back to it after Sophie left. Things were MUCH smoother later in the day...and I apologized to reilly for being such a bear. I don't know what my excuse is!


I did quite a few things with Declan today, too. He did some of his Kumon mazes and some other worksheets where he was following a path or a dotted line with his pencil. Then he did a page about red things and colored some things red. His favorite thing was making patterns with these colored linking cubes that we have. I've mainly been doing two-color patterns, just alternating between the colors. I get it started and then he builds on it. Today he was so funny because he was doing a red/yellow pattern and was showing it to me and realized that he'd left out a yellow at one point, so he had two reds in a row. Well, this just about gave him the biggest laugh of his life! THEN he started making patterns and leaving out blocks on purpose, just so he could show me and say, "OH, look at that! I left out one!" and then laugh and laugh. He's such a goof!

The week before last, since St. Patrick's Day was coming up, I got a CD of Irish kids songs from the library. I had also gotten a bunch of books about Ireland and St. Patrick's Day, so we read few of those. But it's amazed me how much Reilly loves the music! She asks for me to play it in the car, she'll play it in her room on the CD player in there, I find us singing some of the songs at random times during the day. It's so funny! I never though she'd be so taken by the music!

When Allergies Attack

Poor Reilly! She seems to have inherited her Papa's allergies. This morning when she woke up, she could hardly breathe out of her nose, so I gave her some medicine called Simply Stuffy. About an hour later, she says to me, "Mama, I'm so tired!" and she was all droopy eyed and pitiful. Apparently whichever medicine I gave her has a very powerful drowsiness effect on her. So we plugged through some math work and I finally told her that we would go and run some errands and then finish up later. I'm very proud of her for because she was a real trooper, but I knew that if I tried to push things further, it was going to go downhill.


So we went and ran around a bit, picking up the title to The Pepper and making a trip to Barnes & Noble. Declan got a Kumon book of mazes from Troy's mom for his birthday and he's really been having a blast with it in school. It's great practice for fine motor writing skills and I got to looking at the back of that book and seeing all the other ones they have and thinking "OH, I need that one...and THAT one...and THAT one!" I could have gone nuts, but I managed to restrain myself. I kept thinking, "OK, is this something that I need this particular book for, or is it something that I can just do at home?" For example, one book was cutting and one was tracing and I was going to get them until I realized that these were things that I could make my own worksheets for at home. I really like their upper case letter writing book, though, and may go back and get it once we really get into learning the letters.


When we got home, Reilly was fine with continuing school, so we finished up our day. I've been using a spelling curriculum called Spelling Workout, so she wrote sentences with 4 of her spelling list words. I also have a great book called something like "Cut & Paste Language Arts" so she did an exercise in ABC order where she had to paste the words in order on the paper. She just thinks it's SO cool to do school like that! I swear I could teach that girl anything with a cut and paste book! I can see it now - "Cut & Paste Physics" or "Cut & Paste Organic Chemistry"!
Well, I'm falling asleep at the keyboard, so I'm signing off for now!

Wise

Sometimes Declan amazes me with how wise he is, beyond his years sometimes. He has asked to do schoolwork several times over the last few weeks, and I try to get something together so that he can feel a part of what Reilly and I are doing. Today, Troy asked him, "Why do you want to do school?" and Declan responded by saying, "Well, because I want to do Study Dog*. If I keep doing toy activies and not school activities, I won't be able to do Study Dog."

*Study Dog is a computer game that teaches reading skills. There are 3 levels and Deco wanted to play Level 1 by himself, but I told him that he really wouldn't be able to do that yet because he didn't know his letters.

Back From Vacation

We had a wonderful time at Silver Dollar City this past weekend! I think that the nicest thing about having been so many times in the past year is that the frantic pace is removed. We've seen everything many times and we know that we're going back soon and will see everything again, so we don't need to run about like chickens with our heads cut off, trying to cram everything into the weekend. We can just take it easy.

We almost always go and get taffy first thing off the bat. The Kids think it's SO COOL to get to pick their favorite flavors from the big buckets and have them packaged into their own personal bags. It's amazing how content they are with just 6 or 8 pieces of their very own! Then we just meander around and hit our favorite rides - namely, the Flooded Mine for Declan and the Thunderation roller coaster for Reilly. It was really nice being there for two of our three days during the week because the park wasn't crowded and waits were at a minimum. I love the Grand Exposition section of the park, as there are so many rides that The Kids love.

The weather was quite a bit cooler than the internet said it would be when I checked it before packing (Thanks, internet!) so we had to make a trip to the outlet mall to pick up jackets...the ONE thing that I forgot to pack! The Kids got cute ones from The Disney Store outlet - Ariel for Reilly, Buzz Lightyear for Deco.

We were staying in a nice hotel this time, courtesy of a bonus from Troy's job. (Thank you!) The hotel had an indoor pool and hot tub and the rooms had microwaves and fridges in them, and we had continental breakfast each morning. We decided that in order to save a little money, we'd eat lunch at SDC and then fix something in the microwave for dinner at night. We grilled hamburgers before we left home and took them in a ziploc bag, along with some chips and buns and cheese and some EasyMac for The Kids to have as a side dish. (We made sure to stock up on condiment packets when we got gas at QT, so I didn't have to pack bottles of those!) I also bought those single-serve microwave desserts that you can find by the cake mixes and they were FANTASTIC! The molten chocolate cake was our favorite! Reilly and Declan were super excited that I got Zoo Pals plates, bowls, and utensils to eat with, so it all turned out great. We stayed at the park until about 5:30 on Thursday and Friday and then came "home", had dinner, and went swimming. On Saturday we left the park at about 4:00, came "home", Troy and The Kids went swimming while I napped (aaaaah!), THEN we ate and went swimming again. We could hardly get enough of the pool, although there was enough chlorine in the hot tub that I left feeling a little pickled!

On the way out of town on Sunday we stopped by our favorite shoe outlet - I think it's a little scary that we have a "favorite shoe outlet" in Branson! - to see if they had any Merrells and the Carter's shop down the way was having a great sale! We got two pairs of pajamas for each of the kids for $3.99 a piece (regularly $28!!), each kid got two new summer shirts for $8 a piece and we got a skirt for Reilly for $6! I couldn't believe the bargians! I finally had to TEAR myself away before I bought the whole store because, lemme tell 'ya, they've got some CUTE stuff at those prices. (Not at the original prices, though. No kids pj's are cute enough to spend $28 on!)

It was a great and wonderful trip and I look forward to going again!

Oh, and rather than fill this post up with pictures which always seems to freak the computer out a little bit, I made an album at Flikr.com. Here's the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/45168831@N00/sets/72157600009007144/

so I really hope you'll go and look at them!

Supey was on vacation, too! See, he's got his Hawaiian shirt to prove it,

even though we weren't in Hawaii!

Slooooowy Returning to Normal

Poor Reilly! She's still not feeling herself. I thought that we were all better on Wednesday and we had a "normal" day and everything. Then, yesterday, after we got home from Bible study, she started running a fever again! (Sorry to all the other Bible study moms that had their kids in childcare with her! I've been praying that she didn't spread The Plague!) So I broke down and took her to the doctor last night and he did a strep test, but it came back negative, so it's just a really bad cold. She's just so pitiful because she doesn't have much of a voice at all, so she kind of squeaks when she talks, and she's kind of tired and puny acting. It's just such a change from her usual bouncy, energetic self.

But, better this week than next because TROY IS ON VACATION next week and we're going to Silver Dollar City! WHOOPEE! He's out there right now, putting the new luggage rack on top of The Pepper.

WHAT?!?

I didn't tell you about The Pepper?!?

*gasp*

The Pepper is a 2006 Saturn Vue and, I tell 'ya, if it was possible to be in love with a car, then I'm smitten! We're going to get a personalized tag that says somthing like "PEPPR" or "PEPRZ" or "PEPRS" (We can only have 5 letters, so we have to work with that restriction!)

Well, on to school stuff. Reilly has been such a trooper, even though she's not been up to par. We've moved from +9's to the next lesson, which is +8's and she's getting those really quickly. The best thing is that she really enjoys doing the lessons and last Saturday even pulled Troy into the schoolroom to show him how she does her math. It's fun to watch her grin when she gets an answer right!

Well, The Family is all outside, so I'm going to go and catch a quick nap. (Ha! You thought I was going to go out there with them, didn't you?)

I Am Amazed

Oh. My. Goodness.

Do you know what I witnessed today? I watched my daughter learn her +9 math facts in a matter of about....10 minutes. Now, you might think that I'm exaggerating here, but I am not at all.

Math-U-See teaches that 9 always wants to be 10, so he uses his vacuum hose (the round hole at the top of the 9!) to steal 1 from the number being added to him to make him 10. Therefore, 9+5 becomes 10+4, which is 14....well, that seems a little bit confusing as I write it, but it's less confusing when you're sitting there with the blocks in hand, saying it out loud and looking at the blocks. BUT, I looked at the blocks and said to Reilly, "Hey, here's an even easier way to think about it! You know you're going to make a teen number when you're adding to 9, right? (she nodded her head) Well, just look at the number you're adding, take away 1, and make it a teen!"

BINGO!

Just like that, she had it.

Have I said lately how much I love Math U See?

Unclean Unclean

I feel like we need to put up a sign in the yard that says "Keep Away!" because The Plague has entered our home! Or maybe I should just have Troy pace up and down on the front walk, ringing a bell and shouting "Unclean, unclean!" because we've all got a horrible cold. I got sick last Wednesday, Reilly got sick on Friday night and ran a fever pretty much straight through until this morning. She was at 99.6 this morning, so she's mending. Declan ran a fever for a little while yesterday (poor guy, and on his birthday, too!), and has a cough and runny nose, but his fever came down fast and hasn't gone back up. So we're all definitely getting better, but it's certainly not fun having us all sick at the same time! Poor Reilly had to miss Declan's birthday party on Sunday, but she was actually so sick that it didn't bother her too much. And I hated it that I wasn't feeling 100%, although Declan had a great time, so I guess that's what matters, right?
So yesterday was Movie Day at our house - we literally watched movies all day long! - and we all took a very long nap in the afternoon. Today we're still going to take it pretty easy, although I may try to do some math and reading later on this afternoon. I'm honestly looking forward to us all being back to normal!

Gosh, It's Been Too Long!

And I don't know WHAT'S happened to me, but I've not been on here, blogging like I should, keeping everyone up to date on all our homeschooling adventures!! And I'm sure that you've all just been on the edge of your seats, hitting the refresh button on your computer, longing for my next entry, right? Right? Hello? *sound of crickets chirping*
Well, this week hasn't been too spectacular, actually, in terms of doing fantastic fun things. We finished up our lesson on clouds by taking the book that we're using and going outside to identify the clouds that we could see in the sky. Reilly thought this whole unit was great fun and often looks up now and says, "Mom, look! There's a cumulus cloud!"
I've kind of abandoned the Scholastic "reading packets" that I was doing mainly because it's as though some sort of light bulb has been switched on in Reilly as far as her reading is going. She is so amazing! The other night at bedtime I was done reading, but she wanted to continue, so I let her...and she proceeded to read a page and a half of the story that we were reading out of Molly's Story Collection. She needed a little bit of help with some words like "rhumba", but that was IT! The rest of it she read smoothly, easily, and with expression. It really got me to thinking of how far she's come since the beginning of the year when she was still sounding out three letter words. Wow.
Well, I've started a sneezing fit, so I'm going to sign off before I blow the computer away!

Our Head in the Clouds

We've been doing a unit study on weather for the past couple of weeks, which has been a lot of fun. Reilly really comes alive when we do science and it's great because I see it as a way to practice reading, writing, grammar, and language arts all while she's learning about weather. I mean, why go and do a "reading packet" when I can have her read this portion of the book that we're using? Then she answers the questions in her student workbook and is learning a little bit about charts and things like that, simply because of how the student workbook is laid out. I'm making this sound much more complicated and higher level than it really is, but it's kind of hard to describe! Suffice to say, she's learning the things she needs to learn and and she's even learning some things that are extra, and all in a fun way!

Yesterday she made a cloud chart because we had been reading about the different types of clouds. The funniest thing was that we were reviewing what we'd talked about on Monday and I said "Do you remember what clouds are made of?" and before she could answer, Declan piped up from behind us, "Water dwoplets!" (Learning by osmosis!)






It's been neat because there were a couple of days last week where Declan asked if he could do some "school stuff". Usually he's just content to sit and play with his Legos or action figures, but school has been taking longer and I think he's getting bored. I got out his preschool books and we did some counting and coloring worksheets. On another day he and I counted blocks and made patterns. He also wanted to practice how to write his name, which was really cute. I'll have to see if I can find that paper to scan and post. He did a pretty good job for his first time!

Math is still going well. Just when I was starting to despair about Reilly's +2 facts and the fact that we'd been on them for 3 weeks, we played "Math Fact Hangman" (Thanks for the idea, Heather!) and she aced them! So I think that we'll start a new lesson today. Yippee!!

I'm Still Here...

....I've just not been doing a whole lot of posting! I've got some great pics of a science "experiment" we did last week, though, and I promise that I'll get those up soon. We're doing a unit study on weather from a curriculum called My World Science that I bought from a girl from JustMommies and I really like it. So far we've talked about what weather is and what climate is and about the different layers of the atmosphere (meaning that we've discussed that there are different layers...it's not as though Reilly can name all of them or anything like that!) and things like that. Today we started learning about clouds and the different types of clouds and why they look different and EVENTUALLY we'll make a cloud poster. I'll take pics of that, too, and keep them in my digital camera for nobody to see! (Ha ha, just kidding!)

No, really though, I've not been blogging as much because I've been trying to limit the amount of time that I spend on the computer during the daytime. I don't want to have The Kids always see me planted on the sofa with my laptop at every quiet moment, so that limits my non-essential computer time (yes, blogging is non-essential! Sorry!) to after everyone has gone to bed.

I'll get the thermometer pics up soon. Reilly had a lot of fun making that. She just loves anything, anything, anything that she can do with her hands!

Oh, and Deco has started asking if he can do school stuff with us. He says that his "Wegular activities awe bowing (boring)!" But more on that later...right now I'm falling asleep at the keyboard! Goodnight!

Valentines Day Party

I know it's a little early, but we had our Valentine's Day party with our homeschooling friends from church today. We were going to have it on Wednesday, but I thought we were going to go the the CHEER party (CHEER is the homeschooling co-op that I joined), but I didn't hear anything about the CHEER party until last week. I finally emailed the director of CHEER and said we weren't going to be able to make it and she sent me the email the she had "sent out" (I guess to everyone but me!) and it said we were to bring 80+ pre-filled Valentines, plus craft supplies, plus some type of sweet snack to share...forget it! I don't care a whit about Reilly getting 80 Valentine's that are To: A 'Friend' From: A 'Friend' and I sure as heck don't feel like sitting down and making her fill out 80 cards! I'd rather her be involved in forming close relationships with the people that we know already. So, we're not doing the other party and it doesn't break my heart at all.

Heck, when we get together with The Regular Friends Homeschooling Group (from now on referred to as The RFHG, or, if you say it out loud, RuffHug!) there are 14 kids, ranging in ages from 12 years to 10 months, and everywhere inbetween, so it's not like we're a small bunch! If that's not socialization, I don't know what is!

All of this to say that we had the Second Annual RFHG Valentine's Day party today, hosted at Jenn's house this time. It was great fun! We let all the kids play until it sounded like they were going to tear the walls down, and then gathered them up to decorate their Valentine bags. I forgot the glue, but luckily we had plenty of stickers and crayons.

We were a wee bit surprised that the bag decorating only took them about ten minutes, but it was enough time for them to re-set and calm down a little bit befor our next activity. We divided them into two groups, which conveniently happened to be into The Boy Group and The Girl Group and one group decorated heart-shaped cookies downstairs and the other group made heart-shaped window decorations with contac paper and tissue paper. I'm not sure exactly how that one worked because I was conveeeeniently on the cookie decorating supervision committee. Much more tasty, you know? Someone has to lick up...er, I mean CLEAN up all the spilled icing, right? The funny thing was that the boys all sat and very studiously iced and sprinkled their cookies, then ate them up completely, and then only two boys went upstairs and actually made a heart craft. Declan had NO interest in making one at all! He just wanted to get back into the Spiderman suit that Ethan had! The girls had fun doing both activities, though, and after they were done, all the kids passed out their Valentine's. I think we'll definitely have to figure out a better way to do that next year because it was WAY too hectic! We had them lined up on the fireplace and it just seemed too out of control...but maybe that's just the 31-year-old old lady in me talking! It didn't seem to bother most of the kids!

We had all brought our own lunches, so we ate those in shifts (3, to be exact! We joked that it was like a restaurant!) and the kids all played and The Moms talked. It was a really, really fun day. I'm so glad that we homeschool and I'm so glad that the Lord has blessed me with such good friends as Julie (mom to Hannah, Lauren, Rebekah, and Kyrsten), Alison (mom of Alana and Zane), Shelly (mom of Kyce, Korbin, Kallie, and Kendall) and Jenn (mom of Ethan, Emma, and Marica) and has blessed my kids with such good friends as their kids!

Long live The RFHG!

Just Another Friday...

Well, I'd LOVE to report that we did something huge and wonderful and exciting today, but we didn't. *sigh* I think that my creative tank has completely run dry, which is odd, seeing as how I've not done anything creative in a long time. It really should be full! Maybe it's broken...or leaky. That's it, all my creativiy has leaked out when I wasn't looking. That's why my pillow has been sticky in the morning! And here I thought I was just a really bad drooler!

I got a white board for the schoolroom and did a little bit of moving about of furniture and things. I switched the map (that we never use) and one of the bulletin boards to different walls, and put Declan's table against a different wall, all to make room for the white board, and then realized that the white board has a big 'ol dent in the corner of it, so I'm going to have to go and exchange it for another one. It's not that I'm vain and want one that's unblemished (no, really, it's not...I promise!), it's that the frame has pulled apart at the corner and I don't want to have to replace it in a year because it falls apart. So, another trip to Sam's tomorrow, and then we'll be in business. We used it today, though. I wrote "Supey" at the top and then Reilly and I sat and made a list of adjectives to describe Supey. We did the same for "Reilly" and made a list which included all the usuals: cute, smiley, funny, brown, etc. It got confusing, though, when she said "I'm Indian!" and I said, "Yes! You're right!" and then went, "No, wait, Indian is a noun!" and began to wonder if something can be a noun and an adjective at the same time. It's not a good thing when the teacher is confused! But we had fun with the white board.

On Monday we're going to a Valentine's Day party with our homeschooling friends from church. We're all really excited about that and it will be a good break from the daily "grind".

Mad Libs & Dr. Visits!

I've decided that the most sure-fire way to cure my kids of any ailment is to make an appointment for them at the doctor. Having been raised by a nurse, I am of the ilk that believe that visits to the doctor are to be reserved for those times when you are bleeding out of your ears or your arm is crooked and your bones are sticking out through your skin. Or, in our case, if you have green goop collecting in the corners of your eyes every 10 minutes, requiring attention with a warm washcloth. That was happening to Declan yesterday when I decided to make an appointment for him for today to make sure that he didn't have pinkeye. Today, of course, he was much better, and I think it was simply due to the fact that we actually went to the doctor and paid the money! Oh well, thank God for health care reimbursement accounts! The doc did say that he thought Deco had a bacterial thing going on in his eye and gave us a script for some eyedrops which I will go and pick up tomorrow, seeing as how I forgot to go back and pick them up today...darn it, there goes my Mother of the Year award! Hopefully his eye won't fall out overnight or be overtaken with "cwumbs", which is what he kept saying that he had - "Mama, I picked out all de cwumbs!" (I just love the way he talks!)

But, even though we had to take a trip to the doctors office, we still fit in school, for which I was glad. We did math before we left, and then did a couple of Mad Libs while we were waiting in the exam room. Mad Libs are a great way to work on the difference between the parts of speech, and Reilly really loves the silliness of the stories. When we got home she did a page from the Cut & Paste Language Arts book that I got a couple of weeks ago. She was cutting out the adjectives and putting them into the sentences to complete the story. She had asked me if she could just put whichever ones she wanted in, or if they had to be in a particular place, and I told her that they had a particular place to go because it led into our next exercise in how sentences have to make sense.

We finished up by her reading another chapter in Nate the Great and the Big Sniff which is a book that we've been reading over the last week or so. It's a cute book and the first "chapter book" that she's read out loud. I use the term "chapter book" loosely because there are only 7 of them and some of them are only 3 pages long, but oh well! The only thing I don't like about the book is that is uses lots of short sentences that kind of throw Reilly off. For example, one part said, "Claude spends much of his time in the lost and found. The lost part." So they're trying to make it funny, but it just confuses her. She's enjoying it, I think.

It was a pretty good day!

Sick Day....Maybe?

Well, I was allll ready to start school this morning, and hollered out, "Reiiilllllyyyy!" and went into her room to find her curled up on her bed, under her fuzzy blanket, listening to Paddington on CD. She says that she doesn't feel good and she's certainly acting like she doesn't feel good. I've used my ther-Mom-eter (aka Lips on the Forehead) and it doesn't seem like she has a fever, but it's so unusual for her to just lie there that I'm inclined to believe her. So, we've postponed school for the morning. Which is too bad because we were going to talk about weather and make a thermometer, and I know she would have had fun. If she's feeling better later we'll do some math and reading and stuff like that, but we'll probably put off science until tomorrow.

I'm still loving Math-U-See! Yesterday Reilly was working on +2's and it really began to click in a way that it never did when we were just drilling with flash cards. This morning at breakfast I was tossing out some "facts" at her and she was able to toss back the answer right away, something that she's not been able to do up to this point. It's exciting to watch!

I panicked the other night because I was counting up our school days to see if we'd gotten far off track as far as attendance and I miscounted and thought we were going to have to go to school until the end of June! AAAK! But I recounted several times and figured out I was miscounting, so it was all OK. I did realize, however, that somehow I had it in my head that we had to have 150 days and we "have to have" 180, so I'm glad I got that straightened out. (Although, really, I don't know why I'm worried since I don't have to show an attendance record to anyone!)

I Blog Because I Care!

I'm very tired right now...I'm not sure why, actually, other than the fact that it's eveningtime and the day is winding down. I'm going to do this entry as a bullet list...because this is how my thoughts are coming.

• I'm taking a new medication to prevent migraines. It's been less than a week so I don't know if it's actually working, but it makes pop taste flat, which is kinda strange!
• I'm glad that I don't have to submit an actual attendance record to the school board or anything because last Thursday and Friday were unschooling days at their finest. We were uber-busy on Thursday with women's Bible study, a doctor's appointment (for me), and then karate. (We did squeeze in some school between Bible study and the appointment, but not a huge amount! And then they watched a Magic Schoolbus video on weather.) Friday I babysat at the church for a leadership marriage conference, so no school happened at all...other than same said Magic Schoolbus video! Oh well, this week will be better.
• Today everything seemed to take a loooong looong time in school and I thought I was going to rip my hair out by the handful.
• In fact, as I think about it, I've struggled with patience a lot today.
• Oh well, tomorrow is another day. (Thank you, God, for a new, fresh day. Please help me to do better!)
• There's a crazy lady whose job it is to re-stock the salad bar at Mazzios down the street from us. Well, it's more like re-stalk the salad bar because she can be nowhere in sight and you go up to refill your plate and here she comes to poke in the little containers and make sure all the spoons are upright and everything is wiped down and to generally GET IN YOUR WAY as you're reaching for the green olives. It drives me NUTS, to the point that I've thought about mentioning something to the manager. The other night not only was she completely in my way but I was treated to the odor of her recent smoke break. GAG! I've not called the manager yet, but I fully intend to because it's ridiculous...and gross, to boot.
• I've got a new favorite joke. It goes like this: Two muffins are sitting in an oven. One turns to another and says, "Man, it's getting hot in here!" The second muffin says, "AAAAAAA! A TALKING MUFFIN!" (OK, I didn't say it would be YOUR new favorite joke!)