We hit our first milestone!

It's official. We have done 100+ hours of school!!! Yeah!

That means we are 1/9 done for the year. I never thought that I'd be one obsessing over how many hours we put in, thinking we'd just count days (we get to choose in PA whether to do 180 days or 900 hours). Other homeschoolers say that it's easier to count days. it probably is, but my Homeschool Tracker has a nifty little tally that happens all by itself as I check off our schedule. I love it. I love being able to see it change and yesterday our total hours went over 100.

I know that it's blurry, but you can just make out the time spent. :)

Sigh. What a great sense of accomplishment, that we've made it thru this far with little issues. Oh, I don't count the math tantrums and the grammar groaning. Those are normal, aren't they? We are in a routine and though I need to shake it up a notch to get some more excitement into learning, we're doing great.

You know what, it's time for a field trip! I didn't know that we would've hit this milestone when we made our original plans, but today's field trip is going to be fun. The kids are excited, I'm excited and Daddy's actually home to join us :) Life is good.

Now if only the rain would stop, it'd be a great day!

Adjusting my way of thinking

When we decided to start homeschooling, I jumped in with both feet. I read all the articles I could, I joined some online groups to get information each week, and I researched curriculum. We started a month ago and I felt like I was doing great teaching the kids. They were getting their assignments done and with only a few quirks, things seemed to be going well.

And then we hit yesterday. Jacksonian Democracy. It is almost impossible to make JD interesting. I think Ellie stared at me with a blank look on her face while I read the history readings. Ben kept groaning and asking when we would be done. Abby went off and played - she was the lucky one. Now I actually found it interesting what we were reading. The kids thought the only cool thing was the story about how Jackson' supporters literally ransacked the White House on the day of his inauguration.

What am I doing? Just reading boring history lessons? Something has got to change. I need to create a way to actually reach these kids or else I'm going to be talking to a wall each week.

My mom is the one who pointed it out to me. I am normally a very creative person. I can come with a craft at the drop of a hat. It's served me very well over the years at church. And yet, here I am, pushing my gifts to the side. All in the name of getting the subjects done. I've lost my creativity in the midst of planning.

As soon as my mom told me that, the creativity started flowing again. Now there's not much I can do with Jacksonian Democracy, but I did find some clipart that corresponded with things that happened in Jackson's life. I made each into a card and the kids had to match the picture with the statement. It actually worked. And the kids had a smiles on their faces while they took turns picking the right card. Yeah!

And the best part - they must have been listening yesterday, because they actually knew the answers :)

Now if only I had the time to get really creative!

It's a Rainy Day...

and no one wants to do much. It seems like things are taking a long time to get done today. I started to stress out about it and decided that it just wasn't worth it. It may take all day to do their assignments and maybe we won't even get them all done.

What I do know is that I am enjoying the kids playing together. There's no fighting and so far temper tantrums. Ellie was pretending to be a snail as she wandered between rooms (fortunately, she moved a lot faster than most snails!) and Ben was building everyone a fort on the couch. I know that I need to enjoy these moments of togetherness because it doesn't happen often with the age differences.

I have chickens baking so that I can make soup stock (a two day process for us that is worth every minute of work). I love taking the time to cook ahead and freeze for those days when I don't have the time to make good meals. I used up the last of my chicken stock the other day when I made chicken pot pie, only to have hubby tell me he wants to make Italian Wedding Soup this weekend. Well, a trip to the store this morning (chickens were on sale too! special blessing!) and we're on our way.

I tried to get Ben to help with cleaning up the chickens before putting them in the pan. His face was hysterical when the chicken's heart fell out of the bag. This is the kid who put on his short term goal list for the year - learn how to dissect a shark. Dissection in Oceanography is going to be very interesting this year....

Thank you Mom!

It was a rough week as we had to adjust to bringing Abby to preschool TWTh mornings and do schoolwork on the road. It meant that our days are now longer than I would like as the kids end up finishing their work thru the afternoon. I used to think that I'd still have some free time in the afternoon. What was I thinking? :)

We were finishing up some grammar after getting home from Abby's speech session, when Ben came up behind me. Now it won't be long before he's taller than me. Right now, he's a great height to give a hug. This time, he gave me the hug. A huge, big hug and said "Mom, thanks for homeschooling me. I love you!" It was enough to melt my heart. On a day when I was tired and wondering if I can handle the schedule, I got the boost I needed to remember why we are homeschooling to begin with.

We're getting the hang of it...

It seems like each day is a little easier. I can't get Ellie to work any faster and I have a hard time slowing Ben down. But it's easier for me to juggle the two needs.

Manny decided to give the kids a computer class while I took Abby to preschool Open House this morning. He had them watch short videos online about the parts of a computer. Then while they were eating lunch, he unhooked all the cables to anything that remotely connected to the computer and the two kids had to figure out how it all went back together again. He said they worked well together and it wasn't just Ben doing all the work. Now why don't they work like that with me ?!? Unbelieveable! The computer actually worked and there were no problems. Gotta love those hands-on activities :)

I had planned for a shorter day since we're still recovering from a long weekend in Washington DC, but it ended up being a full day for the kids and they didn't complain. I think we must have traded our kids in at some point, because my kids would've said at least something!

Today was a good day

It seems that the more we get into homeschooling routine, the more it seems to work. I know that doesn't sound surprising. But there were days last week when I thought I was never going to make it thru the school year. Days when I wondered if I'd be able to make it thru 5 minutes without Ellie breaking down into tears.

Today we managed to get thru most of what I had planned before the neighbor kids were ringing the doorbell to play. I think I am going to be very excited to have a WHOLE day to do schooling when the public schools start on monday. Oh, I can't wait! I'll actually be able to do all the subjects and be able to take time to enjoy the learning process instead of rushing thru some of it.

So here we are, into week 2 of homeschooling and I think it's going to be great.

p.s. I think I'll need to remind myself of that more than once this year!