It is time

It is time for me to get moving on the Montessori with my 3.5yo niece. The honeymoon period is over and she hit on Friday the "I want something new and fun to do." Seriously, I'm not joking. She asked me if I'd take her into the basement so she could find things that were "more interesting"--her words! Toys often only take a child so far. Here are some things I can show her/have ready for her this week:

*pouring beans
*pouring water
*spooning
*sorting a mixture (maybe popcorn and cheerios to start with)
*buttoning--I have a home-made frame somewhere, but not sure if the frame itself is intact; I also don't know where the fabric is, so I need to locate that
*I could show her zipping by putting her coat on a chair...
*geometrics solids presentation
*sensitizing the fingers
*pull out a different cylinder block
*give her a folder with scrap paper she can cut up
*I need to think of other crafty stuff: she loves crafty stuff

My big issue is where to have the materials. With a 1yo (this coming Wed.!) in the house, it makes things a little more complicated! I live in an open 4-level split where the lower level is practically connected to the main level and I used to be able to make my way back and forth from lower to main and there wouldn't be big problems. It seems like whenever I leave the main level now, things fall apart. I guess instead of living in "fear", I ought to just do what I think will work for my niece--have the materials available for her in the lower level, which the baby gate prevents her sister from getting to--while encouraging my son to do things downstairs near her, and let the upstairs have problems so that we can tackle the underlying problems. That sounds good, actually!

I must get myself off to the store if I'm going to have enough trays and replace the dressing frame (aka wood embroidery hoop ;) ), not to mention have crafty stuff available for all of us.

Remember, remember...

the 5th of November....

And I didn't. lol. I knew Guy Fawkes Day was coming up, but on the 5th, I didn't know it was the 5th, and so I forgot and we did nothing for Guy Fawkes Day as part of our school day.

How could this happen?

ILLNESS.

I've been rather successfully fighting stuff off for a couple of weeks, but it's still lightly there, just enough to be annoying. I've seen it in my kids, too, as well as with Bob.

The 17yo was sick, sick, sick. Started over a week ago, was not at all well on Monday, was even worse on Tuesday and then moreso on Wed. Caught her dad's stomach flu on top of her nasty cold.

School is still sort of going. I did an hour one-on-one in the evening this Thursday with ds and it went sooo well. Then we just hung out. He asked if we could do that every night. lol. I think we definitely have to do it more often. Bob is plodding along ever so slowly but it's still going reasonably well. The 17yo was hoping to be completely caught up this past Friday, but being as sick as she was, that didn't happen. Dd is still needing me to give her work. She's hit the looming adolescent insecurity, I think. That, or I'm just not inspiring enough! I think insecurity is playing a big part. She used to write stories constantly; now she's not as interested because she has hit a point that she wants to actually finish them (she has always just written and written and written and then stopped because a new story idea has come up) but she just doesn't know how. I probably need to sit with her one-on-one here and there to work things out together.

That reminds me: I was reading "From Childhood to Adolescence" which inspired me to get some books out dealing with water life--coral reefs, interesting animals, etc. I put them out on the table and 3 out of the 4 school kids could not but help pick a book that interested them and flip through. :)

Things are going well having 6 kids in the house again. It's been good to have a baby again--she needs to take naps which forces the house to be calmer, quieter, a couple of times a day.

Bob, the little turkey (actually, he's not so little--he'll be taller than me any day now), is reading better in English, but still struggles quite a bit and with words that make you wonder, "Why? He can read that word, but not this easier one?" But that's not what makes him a turkey. I was looking at a French Scholastic flyer the other day with dd and the 17yo (in pdf) and he was standing behind them. All of a sudden, he reads out, "Nouveau! Nouveau! Nouveau!" !?!?!?!?!?!?!? He has not really had any French reading instruction and what little he's had has not been in the past year, and it's not like French phonetics in the word 'nouveau' matches with English at all. THAT is what makes him a turkey. ;)

The 17yo is covering WWII at the moment. We watched Schindler's List as part of it. What an amazing story. I know things didn't quite play out the way they showed in the movie, but still. I'm saddened by the fact that after the war, he never did manage to get his life together. :( Seems like such a shame.

Dd is doing a second session of gymnastics this fall. She took gymnastics when she was 6, made it through 3 or 4 levels (couldn't remember and couldn't find her sheets), had a long hiatus, so went back into level 3/4 for Sept./Oct. The coach for that one decided she was in level 3 and only assessed her for level 3, so she went back to 3/4. After 2 weeks there with a different coach, the coach spoke to me yesterday and told me to get her into a level 5 class because the 3/4 is too easy for her. :D Dd was VERY happy. So now she goes Wed. evenings from 6-8 and I get my Saturday mornings back! This is good because ds has a soccer game pretty much every Saturday afternoon, overlapping with dh's soccer, so I'm the one to bring him.

All right, enough of this Sunday morning babble. Besides, ds is complaining he needs food. :)

Mix of stuff

Our visit to the downtown library yesterday was interesting, as was to be expected. We saw some "interesting" things take place (like a few kids, maybe gr.8 -gr. 10, removing a garbage bag outside, placing their own bag in the bottom, then sitting around for a bit...) and some "interesting" people. Some of the interesting people made us rather nervous as they kept watching us in the library, including a couple sketchy characters we had earlier seen outside. But then I noticed the one librarian and custodian kept looking at us as they went by, too. We're not a freak show! At least, I don't think we are... ;)

Today, I had all 6 kids all day for the first time. It went sooooo well. My almost 1yo niece is such a happy-go-lucky baby and there were no issues. It's the first time she's ever been away from her mom that long and we had no problems whatsoever. Very nice. :) (Actually, there were some issues between a tired ds and a tired 3yo niece, but that's other stuff.) I love having 6 kids again!

I managed to start reading "From Childhood to Adolescence" tonight! I finished one of my library books earlier today, sent another one back I decided I wouldn't finish and just as I was heading out to ds's soccer practice, I decided to grab a book to read and saw FCTA. It's very nice to be reading Montessori again. I always feel, "This is the way I want to go with my kids." But taking theory and applying it can be two entirely different things. :\

A stop-in

Has it really been 12 days since I last posted? Man.

Life has been crazy. My calendar, as the 17yo has described it, looks like a Christmas tree due to the various things written all over in different coloured pens: field trips, days here and there with my nieces, soccer meeting, soccer practice, soccer game, gymnastics every Saturday, dh has school meetings, I had a hs group meeting, birthday party, Thanksgiving out at the lake and then at my mom's, an upcoming social evening with a hs group, Halloween, ds's Reconciliation preparation meeting and classes... That's just October. And that doesn't count all the stuff that's had to be done on the side, like emails and dealing with this and that. It's been crazy. I'm sooooo looking forward to November! Yes, there will still be soccer Tues. and Sat. for ds, and gymnastics on Sat. for dd, dd will be continuing her Wed. sewing lessons (but her grand-maman tends to take her and bring her back, which is very nice and appreciated), and ds will have some more Reconcilation classes and I'll have a hs group meeting. Oh, and I want to attend this thing called XLT that is going to happen on the 13th. But it feels so much calmer. lol. We'll have a birthday party at the end of the month and I'll be having my nieces full-time, but it's still calmer in terms of the weekday and weekend things going on.

School ended up with a bit of a hiatus a couple of weeks ago, but the 17yo worked hard last week and is just about caught up, her brother had his first math test since grade 3 (he's in grade 9) and it took him 6 hours to complete because he'd just get too frustrated and would take very, very long breaks ;) (he didn't have a time limit and the teacher said they could take breaks if needed). Dd is still inspirationless so I've been creating different quick assignments for her to do in geography and French. She had her initial resistance, but it seems to be going well. I have not managed to read more Montessori, however it's still in my mind. I do have one book out right now, "From Childhood to Adolescence", and will work on reading that these next couple of weeks. Get *myself* inspired a bit. :) Ds is still doing his thing! lol. He very much enjoys us reading together at night and has started trying to read a little bit on his own. He's been working a bit more on copying and writing and then in his new math workbook. I want to work on the seasons with him because he seems to think there is spring, summer and winter. Or that as soon as there's frost in the morning, it means it's winter.

Tomorrow we are going to spend the morning working at the library. I'm going to have the kids write out a plan of what they're going to do there and to plan what we'll do about distractions and all that. I don't have my nieces and this is about our last chance before we have a 1yo in tow all the time!

I've been chastised

Wow, I didn't realize it had almost been a month since I last wrote! I've been chastised for it ;) and have decided to give a mini-update and hopefully will make more frequent entries.



School-wise: I still haven't done the Great Lessons. Things are slowly moving forward, finding the routine, but the rest of life has been nuts and I haven't had the desire to spend the mental energy on bringing in the Great Lessons. I would still like to. But it does require preparation on my part to make them go smoothly and that requires time.



Life-wise:


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Well, that's what I had started writing on Oct. 7, around 4:30 or so. Then I lost my internet connection and pretty much didn't have one for over 24 hours!!! I will continue with the above now. :)

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Life-wise:

*September was insanely busy. Every weekend was packed with stuff, which meant I hardly had any time to do the usual things on the weekend, like clean, do laundry and groceries.

*I've become VP of one of my homeschool support groups and there's been a bunch of stuff to have to deal with there due to the switch in executive and some other things, although that does look like it's finally starting to all settle down.

I'm not sure what else I was going to say about life-wise. Hm...

Back to school, though:

We've pretty much done NO work this week at all.

*Monday morning, the two oldest went to a chem lab and I went home with my 2 just feeling awful. We went out for lunch, came back, we three girls watched Stardust while the boys played outside, I fell asleep for a bit during the movie, just relaxed and was feeling a lot better by supper time. But here it is, Thursday, and it's still lingering. I'd like it to just be done with!

*Tuesday morning, I had my almost 1yo niece come with her 3yo sister for about 1.5 hours. We're working on transitioning her to full-time and that was her first time here (the 1yo, not the 3yo). It went very well, but of course, all eyes were on baby. :D (She's sooooooo cute and it went very, very well.) The oldest was showing serious signs of being sick and didn't manage to get much done. In the afternoon, we had a meeting with the teachers from the school (for "Bob") and that was that.

*Wednesday morning, the 17yo was still visibly not well and ended up falling asleep while reading her social studies. Bob wasn't looking too well either and fell asleep on the sofa. I ended up taking the dog for a walk in insane wind. What did we do yesterday afternoon? Gosh, can't even remember. Oh, we put on a movie right after supper (Spiderwick Chronicles), dd went to her sewing lesson, and after the movie, the 17yo worked on some posters we'll be using tomorrow at a ringette tournament.

That brings us to today. If the 17yo is feeling better, I think I'll have her go full force in her work. If she's not, I may just say, "Scrap the week!" We're busy tomorrow and won't be doing any school work at all then. And we're supposed to have a dessert for tomorrow, so maybe we'll make our dessert this afternoon. It means she'll be over a week behind, through no real fault of her own. I'll see what I can do to combine things to get her caught up. Bob was supposed to be doing a math test today, but he hasn't been feeling great and without our internet access yesterday, he couldn't do the online test prep that the teacher recommends, and he's supposed to do that before he does the test. Hm... I think he'd be fine doing the test today if he does a bit of a review first. We'll see how he is once he gets here.

Other school stuff: I purchased Jump Math workbooks for my kids through CHER. I feel like I'm constantly going through math programs, lol. I think this'll be the last one, though. The A Beka workbooks are nice, but they mix everything together for constant review and it proved to be a bit annoying. And unhelpful for my dd. I still LOVE the old Ray's Arithmetic and do incorporate their style here and there orally; the physical style and layout of the books doesn't appeal to either of my kids, but the work inside is fien. I'd like to use Ray's more for review and improving arithmetic skills because it's very good. Why am I using a program if I'm a Montessorian? Because I had to say, yep, okay, I can't do it all right now and it's better that they have something that will work for them than nothing at all. So far, the Jump Math looks really, really good. It's designed to get kids to be thinkers in their math which I love.

That's all for now!


[Well, isn't that interesting? I started this post on Tuesday and even though I've posted it Thursday morning, the blog still sees it as a Tuesday post!]

The Great Lessons

Correne asked me in one of the comments what the Great Lessons were. I thought I'd devote a single entry to them!

The Great Lessons are the start, if you will, of the social studies and science study at the elementary level. They are impressionistic stories which are aimed at giving an interesting, big picture presentation to the kids.

The first Great Lessons is God Who Has No Hands. It's basically the story of the creation of the universe and solar system (not a Biblical rendition--it's really designed to just be a story which gives an impression of how things happened). It is accompanied by some basic science demonstrations (like hole-punch circles on the surface of water on a bowl) and is the beginning of looking at science. From what I understand, some Key Lessons tied with this are in the areas of astronomy, physics and chemistry.

The second lesson is The Coming of Life. It gets into the development of life on Earth, from first life up until the appearance of man, exposes the children to eras and periods, etc. It is accompanied by a timeline chart and usually a black ribbon, proportional to the time since the beginning of Earth, with a tiny red line at one end to show when humans showed up. From this lesson, the children are encouraged to explore biology, zoology and other scientific areas.

The third lesson is The Coming of Humans. Discusses how we are different from other animals, gets into things like houses, clothing, how people started writing down history, etc. This is a starting point for a study in history, cultures, anthropology, archaeology... One Key Lesson tied to this is The Fundamental Needs of Humans: shelter, food, transportation, etc.

The fourth lesson is The Story of Writing--how human writing developed from pictures to alphabets.

The final lesson is The Story of Numerals--the development of writing down quantities from pictures to the numerals we use today.

All of this is available here http://web.archive.org/web/20050305042447/www.moteaco.com/albums.html except I can't seem to find the English version of The Fundamental Needs of Humans, but the French version is there. There are extra lessons in the History for 6-9 album. Two of the timelines are also available there.

hth!

School starts tomorrow!

And I don't feel ready! lol. I should check posts from other years and see if I felt the same way then, too. ;) Actually, maybe I shouldn't, because if I was really ready then I'll feel even more "behind" in my prep.

I do have some stuff ready--the two oldest have lots of stuff set up in Homeschool Tracker Plus, the 17yo has her starting schedule picked out, I have her math and social syllabi done, I've done one of the chapters in her chemistry, Bob's is all laid out since he's doing a "virtual" program, although I should still plan in some extra things like phonics, spelling and math facts. I have a vague idea of what I'm going to do with my dd and ds, as well as with my 3yo niece. But vague doesn't really tell me what I'm doing tomorrow morning!!!!

What do I need to do for tomorrow? Let me just brainstorm publicly here ;).

For the 17yo:

• Because we're going to be gone in the afternoon, she's only going to do three subjects tomorrow morning: math, French and social. For social, I just have to print off the worksheets and her syllabus. For math, get my teaching notes typed up or written in a notebook specifically for it. For French, I don't have a syllabus together because some of it has to be pieced together as we go along. I do know what I would like to have her do. Okay, well, that's not too bad. It's that on Wed., she'll be starting chem and THAT syllabus (with recommended timeframes) is not done, nor are the sheets that need to go with the work she'll be doing.

For Bob:

• Well, Bob doesn't have any of his texts yet. Some of the stuff he can still get started on, though. He'll probably spend most of the morning checking out the school's website and learning about what he's got to do to get the year going--things like writing letters to the teachers. He does need to have a phys. ed. log printed off.
• My main thing with Bob tomorrow will be to harness his energy and emotions. I had him here briefly on Fri. and the mix of whatever he's feeling came out in MAJOR ADD-type behaviours. He's going to be excited and anxious tomorrow and simply wanting to socialize!

For dd:

• I know that I want to start on place value presentations with her, but I haven't picked a specific lesson to show.
• I need to figure out what I would like to show her this year in terms of French and English grammar, spelling, phonics, word study; science, social studies, art and music. I had wanted to do the Great Lessons, but I haven't even read through them at all and really don't think I'll be ready for tomorrow (actually, tomorrow's probably a bad day to do the first one anyhow). But besides the Great Lessons (of which there are only 5), I'm not sure what else. I don't know all the Key Lessons that go with the Great Lessons and I'm certainly not going to have my house full of the materials that are typically in a Montessori classroom that are tied to all those lessons in one way or another. I need to figure out what to do.

For ds:

• I know I want to work on phonics with him daily, but haven't decided what, specifically, to start with.
• I know I want to start the year off in math with Golden Bead work: refresher presentation for the material itself, then progress to the layout, getting quantities based on cards chosen, etc.
• Science, social, art and music--I face the same problems with him as with dd. I'd like to combine the two. Hm, I just had a thought--what about combining *3* of them? I could use Bob's science studies as a starting point. I can't remember what he's doing, though. I'd really like to start zoology, at least with ds, though. I think I need to purchase a manual.

For my niece:

• Start with practical life. But what? And where will these items be? Hm...

Other than that, part of my prep today is getting the "school shelves" in the family room better organized, cleaning the laundry room (it's now the room for the kids' wire cubbies and where the little shelf unit with some of the art materials is; it's right beside the den and is actually supposed to be an ensuite or similar, in case it sounds weird that I'm storing school stuff in my laundry room!) and ideally, make it to the basement and clean up some of that, esp. since we'll need to use the one bookcase in the basement for school stuff. With dd claiming the bedroom upstairs, things, like the bookcase and art unit, have had to find new homes wherever we could place them!

Hormozgan

Hormozgan is one of the words my ds read to me yesterday. I don't think you'll find that on most beginning readers' lists. ;) That and Sistan and Fars from the Iran map. He saw the word "empire" and got very close: em-pur.

I shouldn't be surprised. I knew this would happen. It's just how he is and why a traditional school would be such a horrible fit for him. He did this with talking: used only 2 words at 15 months. 2! He had already said about 20, but only ever kept 2 in his active vocabulary. At that point, I started babysitting my 18mo nephew, who talked a lot, and a light bulb when off in ds's head. He started adding 3-5 new words to his vocabulary each day for the next month! He went from below normal (if you consider only the 2 words) to way above normal in less than a month! It was insane! Same thing with walking. Wasn't walking at 15 months (it was actually 15.5 months in both cases). He saw his cousin walk, "Oh, okay, I'll do that." Within a week, he was pretty much running.

What can I say but he gives his all to the things he wants to do?

All things in good time

Although I haven't "prepped" my son the way I would have liked to the past few years and have really unschooled him for the most part, despite a desire to really introduce him to things, what little I have done is starting to pay off in terms of reading.

For whatever reason today, he pulled out a map of Iran from somewhere (probably from a National Geographic magazine) and started trying to read all the names. It was dd who came down and said, "You ought to come see your son! He's reading!" Well, by golly, he was. It was slow, but he totally understands the whole sounding out in order... I'm in awe. :) And tickled pink. :D

It just goes to show

how something in a child's environment that can take up so little of their time can have quite the impact on them.

My dd was talking to ds about Aragorn's armour or something from Lord of the Rings. He wanted to see it. She was allowed to show him just a little bit of a scene with him in it. Well, a minute of watching the movie is all it took for the two of them to start playing Lord of the Rings! Dd found a ring that she put on a chain around her neck. They found one of those little red Bibles and it somehow became a part of their game. Ds found another ring, and that's the ring he wears. It's funny. At the same time, it certainly gets me thinking about how impressionable kids are--and we must be choosy in what things they will be exposed to!

What a way to hook dd!

We were watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie, The Lord is my Shepherd, and it was about the baby boy that Caroline had who died very young. I decided to check online to see what the actual story was behind it and was led to Wikipedia, which had a picture of Caroline and Charles. Dd wanted to see pictures of the others, and while on Laura's page, my eye picked up part of her genealogy involving the Delano line. Well, that so happens to be one of my family lines, as well as another of Laura's lines, from Richard Warren of the Mayflower. I said to dd, "Well, that's pretty cool. We're very distant relatives of Laura!" Omg, you'd have thought I'd said we were first cousins to the Royal family! lol.

Montessori in the Classroom

Are you a Montessorian? Have you ever read the book "Montessori in the Classroom" by Paula Polk Lillard? If you haven't, I highly recommend it. Especially if you work with little ones. I took it out from the library this week to re-read for the umpteenth time and it's always so fabulous. Giving me so many ideas and having me think, as well as guiding me a bit. Wonderful ideas on how to easily incorporate all kinds of things into the kids lives. That's what Montessori is really about--bringing the world to the kids and letting them explore and be fascinated by it.

The initial interest in some minimal school work has already waned. lol. We've been busy with stuff so I'm just taking it easy, maybe asking a few math questions, things like that. I suppose we already do so much--we went out with my mom and step-dad to a recreation area where we caught a large frog and there were a variety of plants that caught our eyes but we didn't know what they were. I took some pictures and when we got to my mom's, dd and I looked through a book on plants and were able to identify all of them. We now know what a snowberry is. :) And here we were calling it the "yogurt-covered berry" ;). They play outside and dd reads a lot and has gone through probably 2 years' worth of National Geographics in the past few days and I read to ds each night from "Little House in the Big Woods", which always brings questions, little explanations and even him predicting which word will be first when we turn the page. It's all good stuff! Reading Montessori has me being reminded that showing them things that may inspire them is far more important than having them practise this or that.

August!

I had decided last week that we would gently resume studies this week. Just one thing a day that only takes 5 minutes would be fine with me. But I wasn't feeling well for most of yesterday and then this morning, had no plan or anything prepared so I was contemplating what to do, how to just slip something in to get them going or what. After lunch at some point, I pulled out ds's school agenda that he got from the school we're registered with. I start trying to remember what we'd done the past few days so we could write it in. We looked at the little thought of the week it has--this one was to list 2 things he could do that would make someone else happy. I ended up writing a word in the spelling list area (we just use it for reading/reference), and that led to more words being added until we filled up the whole thing. That's all it took to get him going--he wanted his A Beka math book. I couldn't find it originally, so he ended up looking through some things I did find. And he did about a page's worth once I did find it.

Dd did a few questions from her math book, but it's clear her mind is totally out of arithmetic mode--and these weren't basic arithmetic. I think I might put away her book and just do some oral and game review of the tables for the next week with her. No point in getting frustrated over something that was created with the assumption that the tables are fresh in your mind!


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On other matters, I'm slowly getting things together for fall. I've got a better vision, a better feel for how I want it--and how I can get it to be. I know I've said over the past couple of years that I've slipped from Montessori and I wanted to get back to it but it wasn't working or whatever. Some soul searching and deep thinking led me to certain realizations, but I also think I must just be in a different mental state for whatever reason. It's long and drawn out and I won't get into it much here. But I've got a sense of excitement and peace about having, not just decided that Montessori is the way I "should" go because it worked in the past, but committing to it and knowing it's the way I really want to go. I've been reading websites and started reading books and more. Refuelling my mind to be prepared for fall.

I kind of feel like I'm going too slowly though, too much in summer mode. If I don't watch it, school will be starting and I won't really have things ready! There's some reorganizing in the house that needs to be done, some materials to find and put out, plans to write out, lesson checklists to find or create and more.

I know the 17yo isn't looking forward to getting back into the work, but I am. lol. I honestly feel like her math this year is easier to learn than last year's, her chem probably, too, and she's doing social 33 instead of social 30--for which I am very grateful. The course, imho, is easier than social 10. Of course, I'm basing this on the website assignments and don't actually have the texts yet to look at! In addition to all of that first semester, she'll be working on French so that she can do a placement test to get into ADLC's online French 30 course 2nd semester.

For her brother's program... I still don't know for sure if he's going to be allowed to do it. I thought it was a done deal, but I guess he needs approval from the teacher of the program and he has to talk to me first, which he hasn't because he's on holidays. If Bob doesn't officially do the program, I'm going to still have him do all the same work.

I'm sure some of you are wondering how this all fits into Montessori! lol. Well, I'm going to tie in as much as I can and as a general approach--focus on choices, work with the student, present lessons as needed, find hands-on ways to work with the topics, etc. And I'm going to do as much as I can with my 2 and my niece in terms of more typical Montessori.

I knew it'd influence her!

I have a set of Little House on the Prairie books that I've had since I was younger than my dd is now. I had tried a couple of years back to start reading the series to her, but she was not at all interested. Tried to encourage her to read them; nope.

Then I saw the DVDs of the series at the library. I LOVED the series as a kid and was 99% sure she'd like it, too, given how much she enjoys places like Ft. Edmonton. Managed to find the pilot movie and we watched it this morning. That's all it took. She's going to finish up the book she's reading now, Rufus the Sea-Faring Rat, and start reading the series. :)

Does more room make for crazier kids??

Yesterday, dd's furniture got moved from the room she shared with her brother to her own room. A lot of stuff got cleaned up--or stored temporarily in the closet. ;) There's no longer anything on the floor of either room that shouldn't be there. They look absolutely wonderful. And my son is going crazy! So much energy. Wow. I guess it's just the excitement of having a wonderful room to be in now--especially since there is nothing under his bed now and he can fit under it. ;)

Already almost the middle of July!

(Excuse the following--it's a random jumble of thoughts!)

It's July 11. In a few more days, we'll be halfway through July. Where does the time go??? I'm sooo glad I've got August off this year!

We had a great trip out to the lake. The weather was great one day then so-so the others, but we still had a great time. Ds spent lots and lots of time outside playing soccer and other games, as did dd, but not quite as much. Ds learned to play SkipBo and we played a few games together. I'll have to see if we have a deck so that we can play here.

Other than that, we've been working on dd's room. The paint was finished yesterday--she chose yellow--and if the smell is calmed down today, we will move in her basic furniture and she can sleep in it tonight. :) She's VERY excited. Ds wants her out and his room cleaned up so that we can start stamping some fish and shells onto his walls. lol. He's sooooo eager to decorate the walls since we refuse to repaint them (we did it just 2 years ago) but I told him that his sister's stuff has to be out first AND things have to be clean--we can't be messing around with paint when there's stuff all over. That will be our big project today.

Let's see, what else? Ds is making progress with his reading and writing. I'm just pointing out little things or asking him little things here and there like, "So, where's the a sound in that word? How do you know that word is such-and-such? How do you think that word would be spelled?" He's getting better and better at analzying things and coming up with the correct letters and sounds. And he enjoys it, which is great. I've got plans to prepare different games so that we can play more with letters, sounds and words. Bingo is the first I'd like to play. We have a set of letter bingo cards that came from a Sing, Spell, Read and Write kit a former student left us, but it doesn't have all the basic French sounds, like è or é. I'd like to make something that is better suited to French.

Oh, and ds got his cast off yesterday. We were going to keep it, but it stank so badly and the nurse just tossed it into the garbage without even asking us if we wanted to keep it. It's kind of sad--he had all kinds of signatures and stuff on it. But he's not sad about it at all, so I guess I'm just being a sentimental mom. lol.

Dd is almost done reading The Fellowship of the Ring. It's taken her quite a while--in part because she's read other books since first starting the novel--but she quite enjoys it. I don't know if she plans on reading the second book or not just yet. Haven't dared to ask.

Hm... It's 7:35 as I type this and my kids are still asleep. I guess that's good--they didn't get to sleep until close to 10 last night. I don't know if ds will manage to get his 10 hours in and sleep until 8, but it would be good if he did!!


I have a little project I'm going to get started on: comparing predicted temperatures/weather to actual temperatures and weather. I check the forecast often and it's CONSTANTLY changing. I'd like to see just how accurate their predictions are and how far in advance. Yetserday, they had no rain predicted for the coming week. Now they're predicting rain for Monday and Tuesday. Will it change again? Undoubtedly. I'm not sure how long I'll check the predictions, but if they're as unreliable as I believe they are, I'm not even going to bother looking at the week-to-come predictions again. What's the point? And why do the weather people bother? I can understand THEM working on predictions and trying to fine tune things and learn how to predict better, but why share it with the world? lol

Enjoying summer

The last 2 months of school, it was work, work, work for me and I'm finding it hard to stop filling my time with all kinds of work stuff!!! However, I am slowly learning to enjoy summer and time off and instead of my original thought to have a sit-down school time each day, just bringing things into our daily life.

One thing that will really help is that we will be at my in-laws' lake property until Tues. :) Leaving in a couple of hours--I hope. Dh still isn't up, I need to shower and pack yet, the kids need to shower... It's do-able. In any case, I'm going to bring a novel--completely unrelated to school ;)--to read and my cross-stitch and I'm not sure what else. I want to take a little vacation. I will bring a little notebook to write in because I always need paper and pen to write thoughts, brainstorm or to write out little ideas for stories/book chapters. Haven't done the latter in quite a while. I'd like to get a better routine going and so far, this summer vacation, I've just been keeping myself constantly busy, little relaxation time. That's not how I want summer to be!

Oh! I hear dh is up! Time to get ready!!

Music, music

I went out quickly this morning to get a few groceries we need for this weekend. My kids weren't even dressed yet, so they stayed home and I went just by myself. I got back and dd is sitting on the couch playing the recorder--something she hasn't done in ages. Ds, still in his pj's, is sitting in the stairs playing his little Power Tour guitar, something he hasn't seriously done in some time. He goes up to get dressed, dd shares with me a little song she's composed on the recorder then proceeds to play more songs from a beginning recorder book we have. Ds decides he wants to play my flute. Uh, okay. Right off the bat, gets his lips just right and gets a sound out of the mouthpiece. But then he can't maintain it and thinks there's something wrong with the flute. lol.

The other day, it was my guitar that got pulled out. I think the piano top needs to be cleared off so that some inspiration can move that way, too.

I feel like I'm deschooling

You know the whole thing with kids who are pulled out of school, left to deschool, and they don't know what to do with themselves because they're lives, up until that point, had been so dictated by everything outside them and they'd never had to actually choose what to do with their time? That's how I feel. Yesterday was my first official day of summer vacation. I gravitated to the computer horribly--don't even want to know how many hours I ended up spending in all--and just kind of roamed aimlessly. Oh, sure, I accomplished some things, but man... I feel lost. lol. Things had been so busy for so long and now it's kind of, "Hm, what should I do?" lol

Wow, it's been a while!!!

It's been a while since I last wrote. Life has been very busy, what with finishing the 17yo's coursework and helping her prepare for exams and my kids' soccer games (usually at least 4 evenings a week--and I was team manager for one team and helped out during the game in planning subs), plus planning a trip to Drumheller and another field trip to Fort Edmonton and park days and my 7yo fractured his wrist this past Monday... It's been busy.

The end of year went well, I think. Dd and "Bob" pretty much stopped working the last week in May. Now, for all my readers in the US, that might not seem odd, but where I live in Canada, the last day of school was YESTERDAY for public schools. Sure, the junior high and high school kids have exams here and there the last two weeks of school, but... I want to organize things differently next year so that work is going on during the oldest's exam time and not play. As for the 17yo's exams, she was much calmer this year and a bit better prepared. We've talked more about having something a little more structured in terms of assignments and quizzes next year so that she really focuses on knowing the stuff as she goes along rather than just going through the work, without really knowing it, and having to cram it in at the end.

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Our trip to Drumheller was FANTASTIC! We (my 2 kids, plus Bob and his sister (the 17yo)) went with 2 other families--we've all known each other for a number of years. We went hiking in a canyon nearby and other than an unfortunate mishap with one girl scraping her leg badly, it was very interesting. The following day, most of the kids and I went with a local to an area to find dinosaur fossils--and we did!! The kids all went home with stuff. It was great. We also went to the museum while there and to the outdoor spray deck. The older kids had quite the water fight while I was at the ice cream shop with my two.
Sunday wasn't quite as nice, but we were leaving anyhow, so I guess it was good timing. We still managed to make it to the hoodoos and see this old saloon. The wind was something awful at the hoodoos and it hurt at times because the sand and little rocks would whip your arms and face. I think we all came away from that with dirt in our ears, eyes and nose! The kids managed to climb to the top, which must have given them an incredible view.
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We went to Ft. Edmonton this past Tuesday. It was a wonderful visit--the interpreters this year have been super well trained and it was just fantastic. Even though I've gone every year for the past... hm...6 years?...I learned new stuff. I think my favourite part was the kids managing to attend class in the old school house on 1885 Street (yes, the street set up to look like 1885 and I believe the school house is the original thing). The guy they had to play the school teacher did his role so well. He had the boys and girls line up in separate lines and let the ladies go first to sit down, naturally. The boys all had to have their hats off. They were not to speak unless he had called on them, they stood up, said, "Sir," and then said what they were to say. I think his first question was if anybody knew who our "current" Queen was--Bob raised his hand and said, "Queen Victoria." (I thought it was pretty good that he knew to answer according to 1885 standards!) He got a reminder from the teacher that he had to wait until called upon, stand up and say, "Sir." Bob tried very hard not to laugh as he went through the motions. At one point, he and his friend started laughing and the teacher stopped and just stared at them. It was too funny.
Of course, then there was the part when dd's friend (Bob's friend's sister, incidentally--one of the families we went to Drumheller with) was called upon to write the word "queen" on the board. She went up, wrote "queen" and sat back down. He looked at it for a few seconds then said, "Well, at least you spelled it correctly." ROFL. He then went on to explain how it was rather ugly and straight and all that and that it was the type of print we'd see off a printing press. Handwriting should be fluid and curved and he demonstrated how to write "queen" in cursive. Fun stuff.
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Yes, the day before that, my ds jumped off a swing at a park day, lost his footing on the landing and came down too hard on his hand/arm, causing a fracture in a wrist bone. Ironically, this is the same playground where he fractured the other wrist two years ago...
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I've been thinking more about my homeschooling and what to do about it. I'm going to read as many Montessori books this summer as I can and help myself feel more centred in that respect. I also want to put together some things for ds to work on reading and writing this summer--we both want him to be able to do the class for First Communion next school year, but if he can't read and write well enough... This is only our first official day off from school/dayhome, so it's just been having fun and relaxing. We'll get started on it next week.
For dd, she's just feeling so insecure in math, it's one thing I want to work on with her this summer. Get her times tables mastered once and for all (I know I've said that in the past, but knowing she's entering gr. 6 has this panicky feeling in me about her not knowing them--and she feels awful about not knowing them) and also tackle some other things, like large multiplication and long division.
There's probably lots of other stuff I could share, but I can't think of anything else!