Playing With Legos

i posted this a couple days ago at my main blog, and realized i should have posted it here, on my homeschooling blog. oh well, its both places now.

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i’ve been doing a LOT of thinking about education again since listening to some radio shows about it…i’ve mentioned them in a few posts recently, i believe (i never can remember what i’ve written after i’ve written them)…

i just was thinking some more about it…i don’t know where i’ll end up or what adventures we’ll still have in homeschooling…but i tend to go with what feels right and good, and steer away from things that don’t feel right or good. forcing my child to do anything “educational”, against their protests, just doesn’t feel right or good to me. i’m not putting value on anyone else for their educational practices…just stating how it feels to me.

one of the big reasons (out of about a thousand different reasons) that i chose to homeschool is that i wanted to ensure that learning was fun for my kids. i’m not saying that every single thing has to be a hoot and a holler…i mean, it has to be enjoyable. i read somewhere (forgive me if i’m repeating myself here…dain bramage, remember, LOL!) that whether or not you retain info can be dependent upon your mood at the time you are “learning”. therefore, if you are in a good mood, with positive emotions going through you (not necessarily pure delight, but not negative)…you are much more likely to understand and retain the information. Whereas, if you are in a fowl/negative mood (i.e. throwing a tantrum or fighting it tooth and nail), when you are presented with the information, it just isn’t going to stick. how could it? i mean really!

therefore, i’ve always tried to back off if i get a negative reaction from my daughter when i’m trying some sort of lesson or activity with her. i’ve not always done this right away, i must admit…sometimes we end up with a battle of the wills…and then after we finally get away from the situation i realize there just wasn’t anything positive that came out of that.

oh sure, there probably will still be some tidbits of info that make it through…some new skills even…but how much damage am i doing to my child’s ability to love learning if i persist in this method of education. i wonder. i really don’t know the answer, but it just doesn’t feel right to me.

just take a look at any public or private schooled kid. how many do any of us know that can honestly say they enjoy school? oh i’m sure they can be found, i’m not saying its impossible…but by and far, children HATE school! i did. my husband did, my mom did, my dad did…i’m pretty sure i’d be hard put to find anyone in my life that didn’t hate school. why? because school, as it exists currently in our mainstream form of education, isn’t enjoyable. it really isn’t.

therefore, if i’m going to take those same methods and apply them at home, a.k.a. “school at home”, then how am i doing anything different? well…sure i’ve taken out all the negative factors of the environment and the massive amounts of children, etc etc…that’s awesome, and i would say that a school-at-home homeschooler is definitely still better off than a public or private schooled child. (in a private school that uses the same methods) but what about that love of learning? perhaps this isn’t important to some people. its crucial to me.

because if you don’t enjoy learning, you will then not only not retain the info you are getting (which, if you don’t retain or understand it, what’s the point of even spending the time working on it?)…but you will tend to shy away from anything that even remotely resembles learning, in your every day life and later after school.

all this thinking is because i’m realizing that i am probably going to have to let go of more of the things that i have wanted to make work. the curriculums i chose (single-subject) for maeven are wonderful, but they just haven’t been working for us. she really is resisting anything forced. and i don’t want her to reject learning.

she’s such a bright and beautiful child, and i want to keep that spark alive in her…that spark of interest and love and joy in the things she’s able to pursue on her own…its really a beautiful thing. and i really feel like forcing her to do any “learning” against her will, is really a damper on that spark. i don’t want to extinguish that…

that’s what most schools do…you see the kids enter school just so excited to learn and within a matter of just a few years, that fire, that spark, is going out and then it eventually gets extinguished. i fear that using a “school-at-home” technique with maeven will do the same thing, and i don’t want to see that happen. that goes against why i’m doing this!

i’m not saying school-at-home doesn’t work for some families…i’m sure there are children who’s personalities are quite right for that method. they probably find a delight in it. but not maeven. she has started to sound like so many public schooled kids, groaning when i say we are going to do some lesson or whatever… getting grouchy when i push the issue. that’s not what i want. this is not a positive learning environment.

i asked her the other day what she thought about learning…you know what she said? she said she didn’t like it! that she didn’t like someone telling her she had to do this and that. wow, major important moment for me to hear that. she’s telling me that’s not working for her. she’s telling me that spark is in jeopardy when i force activities and lessons on her.

so then another day, not long after…i asked her about the story of the world stories…if she liked those? and if she would be happier if we skipped the map work? she was visibly relieved by the idea! she hated the map work! but she enjoys listening to the stories. so, we are now just listening to the stories…and i’ll continue to get books from the library out on whatever we are learning about in those stories, and we can casually read them. and instead of making her do the map work, i am going to just have us both take a look at a globe from time to time and find out where this area is that we are learning about…maybe even copy the map, but not do the mapwork, just look at it. and maybe she can pick out some activities from the activity book to do, if she thinks they look fun.

i’ll just keep offering her ideas of fun activities…but not force the issue. if she feels like it, great, if not, that’s fine too!

and she will continue to learn. she always does! i stopped doing copywork because she didn’t enjoy it. but now she is doing her own writing constantly. she is writing her own books, even a chapter book! and she writes letters to all of us all the time and she writes emails and types to her friends in toontown…and she started spelling words when talking to us…instead of saying her words, she’ll spell them…too funny. i am pretty sure that she would NOT be doing all this if i was forcing her to read/write, do spelling, etc, every day. it would take the joy out of doing those things, and she wouldn’t want to do them anymore unless she had to.

that’s not what i want.

i want her to find the joy i finally did, years after school (YEARS) when i finally started to develop an interest again in learning things…learning them on my own, in my own time…i even enjoyed going back to college for a few classes…because i had been out of that grind for quite a few years, and had enough of a break to enjoy it the second time around. it would have been fully enjoyable to me if it hadn’t been for the assignments, papers and tests, though. i remember thinking that. that if i could just go and listen to the lectures (many of which i found fascinating) and not have to do all the busy work, i would have enjoyed the classes even more!

anyway, just doing lots of thinking on this lately and wanted to post my thoughts. its possible i may continue to change my mind and my views and continue to learn better things that work for me…for now, i’m really digging the idea of “no-forced learning.” it makes a lot of sense to me.

Good heavens but this child is making this stuff easy! Who needs copywork? My child is CONSTANTLY writing!

Why in the world would I force her to write stuff she doesn’t want to when she is writing us letters and writing her own stories and journal entries and even writing her own books! Like nearly every day!! I’m not kidding!

Not only that but she’s taken quite naturally to typing. I credit Toontown for this.  She’s obsessed with this game…and she has lots of friends on there now that she talks to daily. So she has to–get this–read, and write and TYPE!!

Even her spelling’s improving because if she spells something wrong, it turns red and won’t let her type it. Plus she’s asking me all the time how to spell things, so she’s getting a lot of practice.

All by her own initiative.

This just is making me think harder about unschooling. Especially since  the past 2 Thursdays, I have been listening to some excellent radio shows on unschooling. Gena Kirby has a wonderful radio show called “Progressive Parenting” (click on “about” and choose “radio show” from the popup menu)  that covers all sorts of parenting topics that are often outside the mainstream. I’ve been in contact with Gena since a friend of mine met her when she was planning to open her store “Mommy Matters” (it’s since been closed and is now only online). We have remained in contact over the years and connected in a variety of ways via our mutual interests and groups and such.

Gena emailed me a couple weeks ago because her guest that was lined up to talk about unschooling fell through and she wanted to know if I had any recommendations. I told her to see if Dayna Martin or Sandra Dodd could do it…figuring Dayna would be available, but Sandra as a backup choice. Dayna is a friend of mine that I met after she appeared on the Dr. Phil show, talking about unschooling…this was back when I was doing weekly chats with Mothering Magazine and they booked Dayna after her Dr. Phil appearance to do an unschooling chat with us. We did the chat and then Dayna and I stayed in touch on the phone and I think she’s just an amazing person. Listening to her recent radio shows with Gena, I am reminded of this and am very eager to reconnect and learn more about unschooling.

I’ve got a strong interest right now in unschooling because of listening to these past 2 week’s radio shows…I even sat down and took notes on one of them today. (I taped them both). It’s really inspiring to me!

I might type up some of what I really liked that they said later…right now it’s getting late.

All this is to say that my daughter is learning so much of her own volition! I LOVE it!

Oh and one last thing…I asked her yesterday what she thinks of learning. She said something like “oh, its ok…but mostly its boring.” I was a bit shocked and then asked her what was boring and she said something like “oh when someone tells me to do this and this…”

I got it. She doesn’t like forced learning anymore than the rest of us do. I got the impression from her that she was referring to my “assignments” that I’ve been trying to enforce with her lately…her “schoolwork” that I have been making her do (although not totally consistantly). This was a strong message for me at just the right time. Having the topic of unschooling fresh on my mind…and a firm idea in my mind of what I strongly want for her…the love of learning…I’m determined to figure out a way to make learning fun for her again. Or maybe its just a matter of getting the terminology explained better because she really is learning all the time and she truly does enjoy it for the most part (I can see it in her eyes)…what she has got in her head right now is that learning and schoolwork are what Mommy makes her do that she doesn’t want to. And that’s not what I want for her.

I’m not saying that every single thing she ever learns has to be super fun…but there’s got to be a better way. I am determined to give my children the gift of that passion for learning that I have attained now, as an adult (long after the schools nearly killed it, but I was able to find it again on my own).

I think that maybe I can learn a lot from Dayna in the coming months. I’m excited to talk more to her about it!

I’ve been really disappointed in myself recently (again) for falling off the wagon and getting caught up in life and not getting back to Maeven’s math curriculum. Well, wonder of wonders (not such a surprise to all you unschoolers out there)…she’s still doing math!

Well of course she is! DUH! Math is a big part of life, for pete’s sake! But it still never ceases to amaze me. Recently she’s been telling me the answers to equations she just thinks up in her head. And then she’ll tell me how she got the answer. She’s using the techniques I taught her from the Right Start Math program!

Yesterday she told me that 6 plus 8 was 14. And then she told me that the way she knew that was because she imagined in her head making the 6 a 4 and a 2…then adding the 2 to the 8 because she knew that made 10…and then she knew she had 4 left over and 10 and 4 was 14! Yup, she’s getting it! And she was so proud of using the technique I’d taught her!

It makes my day when stuff like this happens!

My song-of-the-week posts have been sorely neglected lately, sorry. I don’t know if there’s anyone watching for them, though, so I don’t feel too bad. If you are waiting for them to be posted, please let me know and I will work harder at getting them out on time. I completely flaked on it last week and here it is the end of a second week that I’ve again skipped the darn song post. Argh. Gotta get on the ball!

On the plus side, I did indeed do a song with my kids last week. I just didn’t blog about it. In preparation for our annual trip to SCICON Outdoor School, for the salamander migration, I taught the kiddos “Sally-mander”, from my SCICON days.

I’ll blog the lyrics separately and see if I can’t drum up a video or recording of it. I have the song on cd from a SCICON cd I have. But its way cuter when my 3yr old sings it, of course, LOL! I’ll see what I can do.

Everything’s just sorta been going with the flow lately…not a lot of structured learning. Although I did manage to get some things done here and there. I’ve even been keeping careful (mostly) records in my new planner.

We’ve been doing a lot of social time lately. Which I think is a good thing. Maeven and Tyren have had a lot of outdoor play with friends, in this glorious spring-like weather we’ve been having (but I’m hoping that it doesn’t last, because I DON’T want an early spring and hence, early/LONG summer!) Today we spent HOURs at the park at homeschool park day. Maeven had a whole gang of girls she was playing with for awhile there…looked like about 10 of them that were all about the same size. Then later when the families started leaving, it was the 4 girls…Maeven, Brooke, Thea and Stephanie. How cool to see Maeven have such great friends! Really sweet to see!

Anyway, I have song posts to work on, don’t I? Back to work!

my lists are still working quite well…although tyren’s dental drama has knocked me off-track a bit because i couldn’t focus on anything but researching solutions for a good part of this week…that will always happen, methinks…life gets away from me. instead of feeling super guilty all the time, i’m allowing it to just be…because there will always be something like that that is important for me to focus on. as long as we don’t stop entirely, i think we’re fine.

one really exciting thing this week…we’ve finished our first SOTW book and the second one has come in! (i ordered the book, the activity book, and the audiobook and they came in FAST!) YAY! so we are moving on to the medieval world (out of the ancient world) …sooooo excited about that!

we were going to start yesterday but the day got away from us. so we may start it either this weekend or on monday.

so, here’s what maeven got done this week:

monday schoolwork:

–played typing game (i asked her to play at least one, and i think she did like 3)
–art–sketch something that goes fast (she drew a fast train, very cool!)
–copywork–martin luther king, jr poem
–history–i read her a MLK picture book and we talked about MLK and the great he did for america…we also watched part of the inauguration (had to take tyr to the dentist in the middle and she was leaving with her nana…but we saw a good part of it to get an idea of what was going on and we talked about it…and how wonderful it is that the day after MLK’s day that we had a black president sworn in! she’s very excited too!)
cursive–first/last name sheet (she’s getting quite good at this!)

monday housework:

–helped sort our clean laundry and folded her own clothes and put away

then we had a couple days off while i obsessed over trying to figure out what to do with tyr’s teeth…that’s when she was working on her own projects (which, if i had written down, would be seen as quite educational…but i was obsessing, so i did’t write about them, woops!)

thursday schoolwork:

she finished her entire list this day! (housework too!) she was very proud of herself!

–played math game on the computer (we have the DK cd “i love math“, which she’s not particularly fond of…and it didn’t go super well but she was obviously understanding most of what she was doing…it did give her some practice…i’m just going to push the issue and keep getting her to play…i suspect she’ll balk less after awhile.)
–listened to the secret garden on librivox (these are long chapters! but she loves this book…its the second time she’s heard it!)
–played typing game (this is another computer game i bought awhile back..its called “typing instructor for kids“and i think its really an awesome way for her to learn to type…she’s on the computer all the time anyway…so i figured she may as well start to learn to type…it could help her practice spelling as well!)
–earned 2 gems in Jumpstart World (these are the gems you earn when you play one of the educational games…so she was practicing math or reading or something like that…i didn’t specify which ones i wanted her to play, just to play 2…she’s on the 2nd grade jumpstart world…she’s already completed the K and 1st grade games…we buy these because i think its a great way for her to learn and she loves them!)
–read 1 library book (picture book–she read “turn! turn! turn!”)

thursday housework:

–pickup/put away all clothes in room
–help pick up living room (traded this chore for sweeping the kitchen, which was on my list…so she did the kitchen floor and i did the living room)
–vacuumed living room

friday schoolwork:

–field trip to the fresno art museum…after touring the art exhibits, they did a junk sculpture to take home!
–wrote in journal (this wasn’t on her list, but she chose to write on her own! i’ve been trying to get her write daily in a journal and she’s not been going for it, so i was excited to see this!)
–“THINK!” project–i asked her to do last week’s project…build a city out of cards…she didn’t quite do it as expected, but there are no rules, and it inspired her to write about it in her journal, so who cares?

the rest of the list for friday didn’t get done…so it will rollover to this weekend to get caught up on. we’ll see how it goes.

today we are heading to the discovery center to their saturday science class! today they are doing birds!

all-in-all i’m pretty happy with how things are going! we are finally getting things done in a way that makes me happy…i don’t care that she does a set specific list of things every day as long as she is active and learning…i am happiest when she DOES do the list, but as long as she’s not spending all day playing toontown or watching tv, its good.    so doing a little here and there is working for us. and as we get better at things, i suspect we’ll be getting better and better with our lists.

lately we’ve been doing pretty good with lists…since i am horrid at keeping any sort of a real routine, i just make new lists for maeven and i each day so we have something to refer to…and maeven has really seemed to respond well to this…and i’m finally obsessing on something really productive around here…getting MY list checked off each day. no, we don’t often get every single thing checked off…but since i am focusing on baby steps, i’m just glad that we are getting at least a few things off our lists done every day!

actually maeven got her entire list done yesterday! and she was very proud of herself for that!

anyway, despite my trying to inject more educational stuff into her days…i am continuing to lean more towards unschooling…we seem to be a pretty good blend of unschooling and some more focused curriculum…well curriculum isn’t the right word…maybe planned activities? anyway, its just amazing to see how much maeven, just on her own, does each day! nearly every day she is doing something quite educational completely on her own.

she really likes to create things. today its a binder for her “silly poems.” she just started this with a really cute, silly poem she wrote a couple days ago:

I Love You

I love you
I love you more than my home.
I love you more than my toys.
I love you more than my books.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
I love you, ice cream.

LOL! she’s hysterical!

and today’s poem she added to her binder:

I Love My Feet

I love my feet. I love my feet. I love my feet.
I love my feet because they have little faces on each toe.

and she is constantly creating her own books and building cardboard houses for her stuffed animals/toys…today she made a map of where our home is and everything around it. pretty accurate too!

i’m so proud of her! she is just amazing!

and she is reading like crazy! she read not one but TWO books in one day this week. and one of those was much thicker one than she usually reads.

she was reading aloud to her Nana yesterday and Nana was quite impressed with her reading aloud skills. yup, that’s my girl.

yeah i’ve not really focused strongly on spelling and math, and i know we need to do that more…but wow its amazing to me how much she IS doing and able to do.

so i am starting to feel more and more like the things that she is naturally drawn to do on her own–writing, creating, reading, etc…are really the sort of things that i want her to be happy and most comfortable doing anyway…so its all working out. there’s still time for her to learn things like long division and multiplication. we’ll get to it.

honestly, i tend to feel that once they have reading down pat 9which she does), then the most important subjects to me are things like art, literature, geography, history, science…the really meaty subjects. the ones that really cause you to become a more well-rounded individual. i do feel math is important too, don’t get me wrong…but there’s still plenty of time, and she’s got the basics so far.   for now i’m focusing on getting her practice with whatmath skills she already knows. (she freaks out whenever there’s a timed math game…she can’t handle the pressure…so i’m thinking that she just needs to get to the point that adding is pretty much second nature and doesn’t take as much work for her to process. that will take practice.  i’m finding computer games to be a great way to get her to practice.

so i’m starting to not stress so much when i don’t get her on track with things i’d like to see her doing…if she’s still doing something on her own. something i view valuable.

don’t get me wrong…i’m still working on those lists. in fact, i need to go work on hers right now…we had a homeschool field trip to the art museum today so half the day was gone from that and lunch. now we have to refocus to get back on track. i just wanted to blog my current thoughts. and how proud i am of my daughter!

oh and tyren had a blast practicing cutting today. i drew a star for him (per his request) to cut out and then helped him by holding his hands as he cut…to guide him around the star edges. he giggled the whole time! so cute! guess he really enjoyed that…mental note made to do more things like that with him.

ok i’m off to work on maeven’s list…she’s so good about doing the stuff on the list, i cannot break the cycle!

So today was the start of a fresh new week and I came up with a new plan.

I have really not been doing much, at least not what I want to be doing, with Maeven lately for a variety of reasons…Tyren interrupting constantly, me not getting my act together, having too many other things going on, etc etc etc…every day its something…But still she’s doing her own thing and learning a tremendous amount on her own…Still calling it “unintentionally unschooling”…because while I believe in unschooling, I really didn’t ever mean to be not doing much of any focused work. It’s just sort of how things have been going.

But not today! Today I did some thinking and journaling in the morning and was again lamenting why I am so horrid at keeping any sort of a routine/schedule…and how A.D.D. I am and blah blah blah…then I thought of how I’ve been doing pretty good in the past few days with very flexible lists of things I need to get done. Nothing set to a schedule, but adding and subtracted as I thought of things…I’ve been using my dry erase board, splitting it in half to show things to do “Today” on the left, and “This week” on the right. It’s been really working well. I fill in the list each morning, tweaking as needed (leaving on what didn’t get done yet) and check off during the day as I get thing done, erasing the next morning when that chore is off the list again…And it occurred to me that this is sorta a routine but the routine isn’t a list of a zillion things I should get done every day consistantly in a certain order. The routine is that I make a list each morning of everything I can think of that needs to get done that day, and add to the list of things that need doing that week…and then sticking with checking that list consistantly.

That’s it!

The list always changes, as it would need to because I cannot keep consistant at anything for any length of time…but the fact that i MAKE the list and FOLLOW the list (for the most part) is what keeps me on task. I’m loving it! Dunno how long it will last…seems nothing works well for long with me, but for now its working.

So I decided to start a notebook of assignments for Maeven. Doing the same thing…things she needs to get done TODAY. (I don’t put anything about the week on her list, I’ll keep that on my own separate list). And so today I made a list of all the school work I would like her to accomplish that day…keeping it a manageable size.

I put it in a notebook she wasn’t using, and decided it would become her assignment book. Top of the page is her “Schoolwork for the Day” that she must complete. And bottom is her “Housework for the Day” that she must complete. About 7 or 8 small school assignments and 3 housework assignments.

Today’s School assignments were:

• Spelling Lesson #10
• Story of the World mapwork (catch-up work, we had listened to the chapters already and hadn’t done the mapwork yet)–Ch 38, 39, 40
•  Story of the World–Ch 41 & 42
• Mapwork for Ch 41 & 42
• Journal–pick 1 prompt to write in journal
• Cursive–name sheet
• Handwriting–alphabet sheet
• Handwriting–number sheet
• Extra–SOTW coloring pages, read

She did all but the journal and the extras. I was really pleased! No real arguing about it either…

For her housework today:

• Put away all clean clothes (there were a couple stacks on her dresser, already folded). 
• Pick up all trash in bedroom and bring bag to kitchen
• Help sort clean laundry into piles and take your laundry pile to your room and put away.

And she did it all, with no fuss!

I was SOOOO proud of her today!

Of course it helps that she has currency right now…which is Toontown.com She just discovered this game and is hooked! (So am I! It’s REALLY fun!) So I let her play for awhile in the morning while I figured out what we were going to do and then she had to stop and get her school work done. She was not allowed to play Toontown again until she finished. Well, it took awhile, and we had lunch in there too…and so I let her go with having finished all but the journal entry, and let her have an hour to play her game.

Then the agreement was that she turned it off without a fuss (because I let her play before she finished) after an hour, and do her housework without a fuss and then she could have more time to play again. It worked and she got it all done. I decided to let her go on the journal for today…baby steps.

So after a good day like that, I feel pretty good! Hope we can keep it up! Tomorrow will start EARLY with a dentist’s appt…(both kids…Tyren’s first) so we’ll see where the day leads after that.

Now I’m off to play some Toontown!

i have come to the conclusion that december is just far too hectic to even THINK about school stuff. we’re doing our song of the week, but that’s about it right now. at least that’s it for me planning things…maeven is still learning all kinds of things from her own ideas and activities she creates herself.

just now i went to check to see if she was ready for bed and i found her in her room, making a list of all the people she has already made homemade xmas gifts for…she’s got them all wrapped and tagged and ready to go. been working on it for weeks. she’s amazing! she has completely done this all on her own. i’m not sure what all she’s made actually. but she’s just so organized! i am so proud!

she’s asking me how to spell people’s names so she can correctly tag their gifts…and she’s had a blast wrapping presents. none of these cost any money.

not only that, but this…last year we gave maeven $50 to purchase gifts for people of her choosing. she stretched it out to 10 people, with a little mommy guidance. this year she understands that we are super tight on funds. she started asking if she was going to get her $50 to buy gifts this year and at first i said she’d get something but i wasn’t sure how much. then i said probably not $50 and just recently i told her i didn’t think i’d be able to give her anything…to which she said something like “that’s ok, i’m making gifts!” i’m so proud!

not only that but she’s decided to use her allowance that she’s been saving up to buy xmas stuff. not sure what she has in mind yet…but its very sweet to see how caring she is…something that a parent, i would imagine, is ALWAYS happy to see!

its been important to me that she understand about giving. i have been wanting her to not just receive from her family each year, but also give back something…even if its not worth anything monetarily. last year was the first time we gave her actual money to spend on others…but she has given gifts in the past too…one year (i think she was 3 or 4) we gave homemade bookmarks to everyone which she had made. but i wasn’t real consistant with encouraging gift-giving…not every year did i remember to encourage her…there’s always so much going on. but last year, the joy in her eyes as she picked out gifts…and this year as she makes everything by hand…she’s SO excited! she gets it. she really does. it makes a mama’s heart just burst.

tyren will follow suit eventually. if i could get my act together, i’d get him more involved…but there’s time. he’s only 3. and i really don’t need MORE work right now. hell, he’s enough work as it is!! he is exhausting me! he’s been a holy terror lately and its all i can do just to keep up with him! anyway, he watches and imitates everything maeven does, so i’m not too worried about him catching the “giving bug.”

plus we are going to be making a bunch of photo gifts to give this year so i’ll make sure i involve him in it. i had planned to order prints, but didn’t get my butt in gear on that, so i’m going to go buy a photo cartridge for my printer and start working on them with the kids.

anyway, there’s just sooooo much to do around here and we’re not even doing holiday cards or parties or major decorations or gifts for everyone we know! right now i’m just being kept busy trying to raise more money for us…selling things on ebay and advertising on my websites. bringing in enough cash to help us pay the bills (since adam’s gotten a pay cut) and cover xmas. i think we’re going to be ok though. we’re doing ok.

but the songs of the week will continue! the kids are really digging them! every day i start singing one of them…or all of them, some days…and the kids immediately join in! its so fun!

i need to get another video of them singing…well at least tyren…but maeven is very shy about singing in public, so i’m not sure if she’ll do it on tape or not…we’ll see.

so school is officially on hold right now, for the most part (we still listen to history on cd here and there and read books always), so that mommy can make it through december with what little sanity she has left!

yesterday we did actually accomplish a few things…

2 math lessons

maeven finished reading the chapter book she was working on “strawberry’s new friend”

we looked through some more library books on topics we are studying in history and science

we finished the “beaks” book (it was really good! very interesting and great pics!)

we watched our latest signing time dvd we got from the library: “my day“

but that’s about it. maeven was still getting over a cold and i was just starting one.

today i woke up feeling like hell. so we haven’t accomplished a thing yet today.

i take that back…maeven started AND finished another chapter book…”megan the monday fairy“

well the day isn’t over yet. when adam gets home i really want to try to get a couple more math lessons done, despite how i’m feeling. its really the only thing that i’m on a strict time frame with…since i want us to be done with it by the end of the year.

we’ll see how it goes when adam gets home.

even though i had that bad day…and there was still a lot of fighting amongst the children…i think the homeschooling part of the week actually went pretty well!

at the end of the week…

we had finished the 2 chapters i had wanted to finish in history (SOTW).

we finished the book dragonsong

we finished the book thora

we completed 9 chapters in math

maeven did 2 days of copywork (not what i wanted, but its a start!)

maeven had read a LOT on her own (finished one book and got very far in another book)

we did 5 spelling lessons (right on track)

we looked through a few extra books on the topics that we are studying in history (didn’t read them all…they weren’t all that interesting, honestly…so we read the interesting parts and looked at a lot of pictures)

maeven made a book (extra project for history…she chose to do and egyptian pictures book)

we did all the mapwork for the 2 chapters we read (2)

we started a book about birds beaks (a very interesting one! with cool pictures!)

we went to kid yoga (P.E.)

maeven got to play with her friend brooke when she came over to play since their playdate at a friend’s house got cancelled due to illness

and i’m sure there are some other educational things that happened the i just didn’t log.

so i think that was a pretty good week!

now we’re sick and everything seems to be slowing to a crawl…but we’ll be better again soon.