Author: admin

Springing Back

What a school year! It has been quite a ride, and it’s not over yet. Looking back to the beginning of the year, I can see how much progress we have made. Reading abilities have improved, study skills are becoming more ingrained, and math facts are becoming more natural to all involved. Even the kids are starting to notice that learning is coming a little easier to them these days.

I still have so many days where I fantasize about sending them off to school, doing my house work, a little studying or scrapbooking, then fixing a snack and greeting them with a smile when they come home from school. But then I remember that this is really just a fantasy, and most days wouldn’t be like that anyway. Besides, I would really miss them.

Spring is a time that homeschooling really meshes with our family culture and stops being a way of studying. we have spent several months working really hard, but now there are things around the house that we have neglected, and yet there is still studying to do. In order to balance the two we have to kind of squish them together. The result is a day of housework here and there punctuated by reading, math, and quite a bit of play.

Lately James and Posy have been reading “Archemedes and the Door of Science” aloud to me. So I decided to just follow along on that train of thought and added in some Greek Myths (which Ben has enjoyed listening to as well) and some projects. Last week James and Posy spent a whole morning making a cardboard Labrynth for our guinea pig “Minotaurs” to run through. Tessa got a hold of it, though, before any pictures could be taken, and pulled it to pieces.

Paisley is working her way through Key to Algebra, slowly and in spurts. She has really been concentrating on History this year and the writing assignments that have gone along with it. Her writing skills have really taken off this year! She has also just begun working through C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity and we are discussing that.

Posy is learning her division facts now. She is really getting fast with them. Her math book, Rod and Staff grade 3 only goes up through the 6s, but we will cover the rest this summer.

Ben’s reading abilities continue to amaze me. Yesterday I started having him read to me from McGuffey’s Third Reader. He struggled just a little bit, but overall he did better than I expected. He has been devouring Magic Tree House books like crazy, going through 3-4 of them a week!

Tessa and I have been doing a few activities in Slow and Steady Get Me Ready. She really enjoys working one on one and loves to be read to as well. Some of her favorite books are Corduroy, Goodnight Moon, and Elephants Never Forget. She loves hearing nursery rhymes and is starting to be able to fill in the blanks if I leave out a word and wait for her to say it. But she gets tired of that game pretty fast and after the first two or three times will just say, “I don’t know.”

My Attitude Problem

Do you ever have one of those moments when you realize HOW you are coming across to people? … And you realize that it isn’t pretty?

I had just such a moment yesterday. I had been running around crazy and stopped to talk to our priest at the soup supper. I hadn’t even managed to eat any soup myself, I was feeding the kids and trying to get then not to make a big mess, and besides there wasn’t any soup I liked. (So it was my own fault really.) He asked me how I was and I *sigh* and eek out a grin and say that I am surviving.

SURVIVING?

ACK. What a martyr.

Then I went back and read an email I wrote the other day. It was all the same. Gosh, you would never know that I am actually a pretty happy person. That my days have been improving as I s-l-o-w-l-y implement the FLY lady system. The last two days I have found myself with a block of time in the middle of the day where nothing is calling for me to do it right now. (!!!) This is very exciting! I have time to read and study the things I want to learn about. I have time to get my act together and anticipate a bit about what is coming up during the evening. I have time to roll around on the floor with the dogs and sit and talk to Paisley about nothing in particular, play a board game, play toys with Tessa.

Sure I have a long way to go as far as my house goes, but the point is that I am doing so much better than just surviving.

This attitude of mine is a long ingrained habit. I need to break it. It is so unattractive and tiring for others to have to listen to me yammer on about how hard my life is, especially when it is NOT. I have to remind myself, that there really is no other job I would like to be doing in the whole world. If I had my pick of EVERYTHING, I would pick this. Even when it is hard, and even when I don’t get any time to myself.

Wow. Am I lucky or WHAT?

A lot of things in my life are in a serious shake up right now. I think God is asking me to do some growing up and stop being such a baby. I need to be the grown up I want my kids to become.

Anyway… I just had to talk this out here. Saying it (writing it) just makes it more concrete for me.

Been Away a While

Well, time sure does fly, doesn’t it, it has been a long while since I have posted any updates here, but there has been plenty going on! All three girls have had birthdays, and we have been through a nasty bout with the flu and some health issues for Jay.

Jay went through some steadily worsening pain a few weeks ago, and it went on and on. He kept going to doctor only to hear, “We can’t find anything wrong with you.” It was very frustrating for all of us. To make a long story short, he was finally diagnosed with Colitis, still waiting on the info of what kind, but the doctor was able to put him on some medication to control it. He is feeling much better now and is back at work!

Tessa Turns Two!

Our little princess turned two. It is hard to believe how fast time has flown. One minute she was a tiny baby in our arms, and now she is running around, making her own jokes, taking her shoes off (again and again…) and talking our ears off.

She is learning to count. She usually just counts “6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.” She can say her ABCs along with us. She loves to go bug hunting with her sister, Posy. She sings all the time. When she can’t think up a song, she will just hum to herself and make up one. She has been fully potty trained for sometime now, and is sleeping mostly in her own bed (but still in Mommy and Daddy’s room!)

Tessa is learning to make the sign of the cross, how to pray a Hail Mary, how to wait for our grace to be said before she eats. She knows Jesus when she sees statues or pictures, and always wants to kiss his owies. She tells him she loves him and we tell her how much he loves her!

She just exudes sweetness, and we are so blessed to have this little jewel in our lives!

Winter? This is WINTER?

It has been a gray, cloudy week around here. We have even had a few sprinkles here and there. Not quite enough to make for full fledged rainy days, but enough to make it too muddy to play outside much and to make the kids go a little stir crazy.

But that got relieved a bit yesterday with the delivery of James’ new Game Cube game, Super Smash Brothers, which sucked the kids in for hours.
Since they all had their school work done, I just let it happen so I could get some laundry done.

This week also brought the anniversary of the infamous Roe Vs. Wade. We took the kids to a LifeTeen prayer service in rememberance of those who have been killed or injured by the legalization of abortion. It was a touching and holy service, with much singing and our new Bishop spoke. He is a wonderful, moving speaker who has been involved directly in the prolife movement for years. The kids did pretty well for the most part, except for Tessa declaring that she had to go potty at a very quiet moment. It was great to run into Jay’s brother Andy, who is on the youth team at our parish.

We have been working on night-weaning Tessa. So the last couple weeks have been ones of sleep deprivation much like the newborn stage. But we stuck with it and were reward with three good nights in a row! She is starting to understand that it is just not worth waking up if there is no yummy warm milk to wake up for. So hopefully in the next week we will all get mostly back to our normal sleep routines.

We have been mostly using Dr. Jay Gordon’s ideas in Changing the Sleep Pattern in the Family Bed for ideas on how to handle things.

Back to Work

School got a rough start this week as the kids seemed to have wordlessly banded together and initiated a work slow down. After scraping our way through Tuesday, with each of them getting only about one assignment done (if even that) each day, we sat down with them and laid it on the line. No school work, no activities –
That INCLUDES gymnastics.
That got their attention, and I had my eager-to-work students back on Wednesday.
On another note, they have all been reading fiends when not doing school, so that at least is a good thing. Ben surprised me by reading the word “sympathetically” with only a minor mispronunciation. He is turning into quite the reader around here!

Paisley with be taking the Catholic High School Exam this Saturday. We are still not sure if she will go or not, but we want to keep all doors open for that possibility. We are also looking into enrollment based homeschools like Seton, (don’t cringe, Annie!) Mother of Divine Grace, and Kolbe.

A Breath of Fresh Air

After struggling through the first three days of homeschooling this week, I had just about had it. Trying to drag them through their assignment lists, kicking and screaming, was just not working. So on Thursday we took a little different spin on things.

I put on a video (from Mentura) about Coral Reefs. (We have been watching a lot of “Finding Nemo”, So I figured it wasn’t too much of a stretch!) Then I read the kids part of a book about whales, focusing on their baleens. After that was done and they had a better grasp about what a baleen was, we read the story How the Whale Got His Throat from Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling. Then I had Ben tell the story back to me (Narration, Charlotte Mason style) and Posy was supposed to write the story in her own words… but that hasn’t yet been finished. Oh well, that gives her something to start the new week with.

It was a very refreshing break from our book work and I think I need to go back to doing this more often. It felt a lot less like work and a little more like Learning.

Gearing Up

Less than one week of vacation, and it is ticking away fast. So far I have cleaned up the school room to a reasonable level, and organized some of my materials. It’s amazing how messed up things can get from daily use. I think I am going to have to revise our schedule a little bit. Working from 2-4 in the afternoon may be handy for running errands and such, but it was running into an awful lot of afternoon activities. Constant adjustment. I think that may be our homeschool motto.

I am feeling pretty glad that we went with the MODG lesson plans this year though. Now I know right where I can pick up and go on from. Having that to fall back on will make getting started again so much easier. I do need to sit down and review for myself where we are, but that should only take about an hour one night after the kids are in bed. (Wait, are they EVER in bed?)