The Homeschool Mother's Journal: March 15, 2013

 

In my life this week...I went into the Dr. this week expecting to only get some routine blood work done, and came home with a whole lot more.  He noticed my voice was nearly gone, and I was pretty stuffed up.  He looked at me and said you've surely got a sinus infection, and it sounded like I need to get some antibiotics going.  The sinus infection wasn't too surprising as my sinuses are always in pretty bad shape, I never know when I've truly got a sinus infection or just bad allergies.  He also gave me some nasal spray, and directions for clearing my nose up.  Oh I sure hope this means I might get some relief soon!  I would love to be able to breathe again (FYI, I haven't been able to breather for months).  After this is cleared up he said we need to work on a solution to get the allergies under control.  Yes!  Maybe I'll have some relief soon!  The allergies have been bad the past few weeks.  Makes me worry about Spring and summer if they are this bad already!

In our homeschool this week...Monday was the last day of co-op Monday school for us.  Then Monday evening it was presentation night for the kids to show off all the things they did in their classes.  I think presentation night is my favorite part of the whole thing.  It's fun to see what everybody has learned together.  Aric also finally got to take his beloved "math fun folder" home.  He has been telling me about this math folder that they put together in his co-op Kindergarden class.  All he wanted to do was go home and play math games on Monday night when we got home.  We had to save it for Tuesday morning.  There are a lot of really fun easy games in that thing!  It will be nice to have that around for a while.

We also have been reading each morning from the scriptures about the life of Jesus Christ from his birth and we'll go all the way to the time he is resurrected on Easter Sunday.  It's an Easter countdown that you can find at Our busy homeschool.  This has been hard, but great at the same time.  I've never found it easy to sit down and read scriptures with all my children at once, but it's time.  They've done pretty well, and I've discovered that it can help Aaron to learn how to read too!  He's really trying some mornings, other mornings I have to push him more, but he's picking it up!  It's also nice because there is a movie to go with each day.  I really want reading the scriptures to go with our school day, each day, we are getting there!

Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share...don't get stuck on a question and waste time trying to come up with a good answer when you don't have one :-)

Places we're going and people we're seeing...Wednesday we did a library double duty day!  In the morning we went to story time at our non-local library in Wilsonville.  We just love their story time.  Then later in the day we took a walk to our local library to return a book that was about to be overdue (these libraries are not connected, so we had to do this).  We ended up walking in during their brick club which no one was at, so my boys happily sat down and played with legos and blocks.  We weren't really planning on staying, but I couldn't deny them the fun of legos at the library.  While they were doing that I was able to pick up my books on hold, and a few others that I stumbled upon on the shelf.  We ended up leaving with a pretty big stack of books.  Good thing I have a basket in the stroller for walking home!

My favorite thing this week was...getting to know some new books (lots of them.  More on that later)

Things I'm working on...changing over to a more classical approach to our homeschool.  As in completely switching over, but it will be a slow process though.  I'm using Ambleside online right now as a starting guide.  So, that means I'm having to get to know a whole lot of books I've never read or even heard of.  I love it though.  This is what I've needed to do for a long time.  To take the leap into a more classical/Charlotte Mason type homeschool.  I'm also using "The Well Trained Mind" for guidance too.  I have been trying to gather books, and really wrap my brain around this whole 'classical' method of homeschooling.  I've always loved this approach, but haven't been ready to do it all the way yet.  I feel like I/we are finally there.  My brain is still processing a lot, and has been over the past 2 weeks.  Like how to fully implement all this is still mind boggling.  We are going to start artist/composer studies, copywork, reading, reading, and lots of reading.  This is a lot more reading than my kids usually like to do.  They will become readers soon!  I hope.

I'm reading...This is the stack of new books I waded through this morning.  Most are from the library, some are ones I ordered from Amazon.  Some of them I've only read the first 1 or 2 chapters.  I also have quite a few new books on my ipad kindle app, and on my nook that I'm glancing over.  Like I said I'm having to get to know a lot of books with our new curriculum/style of homeschooling.  I've also got the entire Charlotte Mason homeschooling series on my kindle app.  That's some heavy reading!  I've wanted to read it for some time, and I'm glad the whole thing is just on the ipad now to pick up and read when I can.  I love holding a good paper book in my hand, but I'm so thankful for electronic books too.  Makes taking a book anywhere easy!



I'm cooking...not much this week.  I only made some rice krispy treats with lucky charms instead of rice krispies to go with our art and story time.  That's about all I did in the kitchen this week.  Hubby made some yummy fajitas today for dinner when I wasn't feeling up to cooking.

I'm grateful for...the ability to still function each day this week even though I felt miserable pretty much the whole week.  We still managed to squeeze in some decent school work even though my head was pretty fuzzy and I couldn't always think straight through all the sneezing.  I'm grateful for our walk to the library on Wednesday.  I'm grateful that by the time we were walking home my 6 year old Aaron was complaining less about how tired he was and feeling better after getting out and walking.

I'm praying for...friends.  I guess I should re-word that, I'm praying for better friendships with old friends, and finding new friendships for my children and for me.  I'm praying for myself to be a better friend to others too.

I rewarded my kids this week by...paying the little ones $1 each if they were good for April (my oldest) while I was at my Dr.'s appointment.  She would report to me how good they were.  I also rewarded April $5 for being a good babysitter.  The boys would report to me on how she did as well.  They all did good.  This wouldn't normally be a paid babysitting job for April, but I decided to give them all an opportunity to earn some money.  I'm sure they'll want to go spend it tomorrow when we're at the store :-)

A photo, video, link, or quote to share...I stumbled upon this McGuffey's second eclectic reader while finding books from the Ambleside online book lists.  I'm excited to see how it works for us.  I like old books, and this one is pretty fun to look at.





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Desiree