Thursday, September 10, 2009

Swimming

I really want to post some pictures of what Emily and Grace have been painting, but maybe I will get a chance tomorrow. So anyway, today was open swim for the homeschoolers. At the beginning of the week I told the girls that if they got all of their Thursday work done, that we could go to swimming on Thursday. Grace managed to get her school done. Brooke would have been able to finish this morning. But Emily was just overloaded. By bedtime last night, she still had to finish taking notes on Science and had a History quiz to attempt again for the THIRD time. And that was still Wednesday's school. I didn't have anyone to watch Allison, which would have made swimming difficult. I mean, I'm not big into everything having to be fair all of the time, because I am rather mean, but I just couldn't see letting everyone else swim and making her stand there and watch for an hour. So as of last night I decided we just couldn't go. So this morning (I woke up to the smell of pancakes made by Brooke, by the way!) I thought I would let Grace bake cookies to make up for not going swimming since she had worked ahead. All was well. But then I remembered that I needed to get dog food and a prescription refilled so I decided we would go swimming. I was going to take Brooke up on her offer to stay home with Sophia and Allison and let Em and Grace go swimming. So into the shower because we leave in an hour. Okay, so out of the shower and I discover Emily and Grace haven't even made their beds yet. After a more critical look at things, they hadn't done a very good job on their other chores either. So as much as I didn't want to, I told them no swimming. Tears. Guilt. Alright, meeting in the living room. After a big discussion and some added chores, we are once again going swimming. Maybe I am getting soft, I don't know. In then end things went as scheduled. Emily and Grace made it just in time for swimming and had so much fun swimming with their friends. I was able to visit with some moms I haven't seen in so long and even meet some new homeschooling moms. Of course my favorite part in being around other homeschool moms is that I can bring up something I am struggling with in our schooling and someone always seems to have some idea to try that I just can't seem to think of myself. So, I left with new ideas on how to help Emily with her quizzes and tests. Some things are so obvious, I don't know why it take someone else saying it for me to see the answers. In the end I was glad I decided to go. Of course by the time I got out of Wal Mart (Remember the starving dog?) Emily and Grace were arguing again and all of their promises of good behavior were forgotten. And now as I sit here tonight I don't even remember what chores they promised me they would do! Oh well, so it goes. Atleast we came home to fresh baked chocolate chip cookies! Doesn't that just make everything okay?

Thursday, September 3, 2009

We Started!

School has started. Somehow we managed to be up and going with all the computers ready for our starting date. So now we are two and a half weeks in. As you can tell, Brooke has not blogged yet. Oh well. The ringer is off, though. That was the best idea I have had. I seem to get a couple journal topics in a week for Emily and Grace. It is really fun to read what they have to say on things. The first two weeks I was dedicated to spending time everyday with Sophia doing preschool things. This week hasn't gone so well on that. But I am hoping I will get back on track with that. She just loves to do school work. So much right now is dependent on how well Lydia is sleeping. When we have a good night it is easy to get up at 7:00 and keep on our schedule. However, that doesn't seem to happen very often. Many days it seems I am not up until 9:00. Thankfully the kids manage to get going on time so they don't get behind on their school. It is really hard for me though to start my day late. I feel like I am behind all day long. And of course that leads to a crabby overwhelmed mom. :) But I like to remain positive that it will get better, that Lydia will start sleeping through the night, and someday my schedule will be successful!

Some of the fun things we have done:

We took a field trip to the running track in Sidney and did a timed mile. Brooke needed to do one for her Fitness Fundamentals class. Brooke, Emily, Grace, and I all did a timed mile. It is crushing to my ego that I am running fairly consistently and Brooke doesn't exercise at all and she was only 10 seconds slower than me in the mile. Oh that hurts! Brooke and I also got our body fat measured. Obviously I am not going to post that on here! Let's just say there is work to be done, and oh how I miss those younger years! The only other fun school thing I think is that the bookmobile comes almost right to our front door now! That is really nice. Sophia and Allison just love going to pick out books there.

Brooke: I just love Alpha Omega Academy! Brooke is getting used to new classes and new teachers. Things seem to be going well so far. There is some difficulty with new teachers and understanding what they expect of her. But she is adjusting. Most days she is done with her school by noon and has plenty of time to work on her assigned projects. I know as the year goes on, the work load will get harder, but it is nice to have a slow, easy start to get her used to it.

Emily: Fifth grade is going good for Emily. The hardest thing for her right now is learning how to take notes in History and Science. It is very time consuming for her. But something has to be done because she has such a difficult time with her quizzes. Emily probably spends the most time of all the girls doing her schoolwork. Someday it seems to take all day for her to finish. Thank goodness she is not a complainer. She just sits and works until she is done.

Grace: We decided this year that Grace should do third grade again. She has struggled so much with school. It seemed that if we were going to do it, now was the time. Now she is redoing it and getting such good grades that I wonder if we should have moved her up! But, I know it will get more difficult for her as we get into the year more. It is very good for her ego right now to be doing so well. I think she needs that confidence booster. As Josh said, it is better to have a third grader that feels really smart than a fourth grader that feels, well, we'll just say "not smart".

Sophia: Sophia is working on learning how to write her capital letters in a workbook right now. Then I have a lower case letters workbook after that and am hoping to get to the preschool workbook this year. We are also doing Pre-Math-It. That is basically just dominoes. Right now we just match up the squares and are learning about zero.

Allison: I am trying to do some reading with Allison. She also helps Sophia and I with the Pre-Math-It. Her favorite though is at the end when I line up the dominoes and she gets to knock them over.

Lydia: She is sitting up now! We've been working on clapping, waving bye-bye, signing milk, and of course saying ma-ma.

So that is what is happening right now in our homeschool. The journey continues...