A new way to do math!

Did you know that if you type a math problem into google (like 7+8 or 34 X 4) it will give you the answer. 

 My kids know it.  They learned it from another homeschooling friend.  Honey asked me if I e-mailed her friends mom, and I admited that I did.  She said that was good, poor Honey was afraid that her friend wouldn’t learn any math if she kept doing this.  Did you get that!  Honey was worried about her friend not learning math!  Honey who struggles with math, who will on occasion lie about this or that, did not try to use this for herself, but wanted to help her friend.  I am pretty proud of her for that.

There’s a Dead Rat in the Basement Mom!

Yep, thats what Honey said when she came into my bedroom yesterday.  I was still feeling queasy.  So, I did what any good mom would do, I went and got the good dad!  I never saw the mouse, but evidently, there was a dead one in the basement.  (It was a mouse not a rat.)  Now there are three mouse traps in the basement.  Maybe there will be more ‘dead rats’ in the basement.

Sick again!

This time it is just me, and Kiddo is a little off but not acting sick.  It is just a stomach virus that has me not wanting to get to far from the bathroom.  I was hoping for a 24 hour thing, but maybe I will be lucky and it will only be 48hrs. 

It is no fun to be sick.  It is not fun for me or for those who have to figure out how to do my job for me.

A few changes.

When it comes to school, we are always changing things.  Sometimes big changes, sometimes small changes.  This week I have a couple of small changes planned, and I am thinking about some big changes for the future.

The small changes: 

 After showing Honey’s spelling program to my sister, I realized that we could be doing more reading with it.  It comes with cards that have the spelling words printed on one side.  I usually don’t use the cards, because after she has learned the rules, she seems to get how to spell the words pretty easily.  Starting this week I am going to start having her READ the words to me instead of spelling them to me.  She has learned all of the rules concerning these rules and should be able to read them without trouble.  We will see.

The other small change concerns the laundry.  The kids have just about taken over the folding and putting away of the laundry.  They are having fun with it, but I know that the fun will not last forever.  So today I bought them a puzzle, and tomorrow when they finish the laundry I will give them each a piece or two.  I’m not going to show them the box or tell them what the puzzle is about (or that it is a heart shaped puzzle) just give them the pieces.  It should take them less than a month to earn all of the pieces of the puzzle.  Hopefully this will help to keep it fun.  (And $7.00 for a month of getting the laundry done is a lot cheaper than paying a maid!)

The big change:

The big change that we are thinking about concerns Honey.  We are considering letting her drop piano.  The reason we started Dearie in piano was to teach Dearie that she is capable of doing hard things.  That it is OK to not be able to do something the first time you try.  These are lessons that Dearie needed to learn (and she has learned them and she is doing great in piano now) and they are lessons that Kiddo will need to learn.  Honey on the other hand gets to practice this lesson everyday in every subject.  Giving her one more ‘hard’ subject just doesn’t seem fair.  So we are thinking of letting her drop piano and letting Kiddo start.  Honey needs to learn a different lesson.  She needs to learn that some things are easy.  Some school things are fun.  She needs to see that she really is good at some things.  So after we drop piano for her (maybe the end of the year?) I hope to find someone to work with her on art.  I would like to find someone who loves art and could share their enthusiasm with Honey.  While I know that Honey is good at art, it is not something that I am good at so I really can’t help her much and I am not that enthusiastic about it.   (If you know of anyone who fits this bill and would be willing to come to the house, let me know.)

The nice thing about homeschooling is that you are never stuck with the current plan.  You can make big changes or little ones whenever you like!  I’m glad that we homeschool.

Billy Bear!

Does anyone remember Billy Bear?  He came from California.  He was supposed to visit Germany.  Remember?  He disappeared.  I had finally given up hope, he would never turn up. 

Guess who turned up tonight?  Yep, Billy!  He was just hanging out in a box in the top of my closet all these months.  How did he get in a box in the top of my closet?  Well I won’t name names, but I think that it was a male who helped him get there.  You can draw your own conclusions.

Maybe Billy can continue his world travels now, but I think that he has had his fill of closets.

A Nannny?

I read a lot of blogs.  Sometimes the people seem almost like friends.  On this blog http://www.cockrumfamily.blogspot.com/  Andrea is talking about getting a Nanny.  Someone to help with the cleaning, schooling, cooking…    It is only for 15 hours a week, but wow, I can’t help imagine how much of a difference it would make here.  Someone else to teach Science when Dearie is being defiant with me.  Someone to start dinner while I help with math.  Someone to check the chores that I always forget because I am doing school with Kiddo.  Someone to do the vacuuming that is always getting put off.  I bet that I could find enough work to keep someone busy for 15 hours a week. 

But alas, Dh would never go for it.  But… a girl can dream, right?

Camp was great, but the stuff we brought home is not so Great!

We had a great week at camp.  The speaker was great, the kids had fun, and mostly we just relaxed in a great place.  The bad news is that we brought home the flu.  Everyone is sick.  The kids and Dh have all had fevers, body aches, coughing,and some have sore throats and headaches.  I don’t feel great and am coughing but at least I am well enough to take care of everyone else.  So far only Kiddo’s asthma is acting up, and the breathing treatment made her throat hurt.  At least she is doing pretty well at the moment.

 

A funny from camp.  The last night Dearie was very nauseous.  She never got sick, but I sat up with her for quite a while.  She said that it wasn’t so bad if she was thinking about something else, so we started talking about other things.  She asked my if I liked blue because of the way it sounded.  Huh!?!  How can you like a color because of the sound of its name?  She then said that she liked Yellow, Orange, and Purple because she liked the sound of their names.  That is the definition of an auditory kid!

The shoes off her feet!

This morning, I met a friend in the hallway while we were picking up the kids from Sunday School.  She was upset as her daughter had broken her shoe and they were planning on going out to eat today (for the first time in months).  Her daughter is a year younger than Honey, but her feet are a good size bigger.  Dearie came to the rescue and was a good sport as she loaned her shoes to her friend.  It was raining as we left, so Dh pulled up the van and Dearie made it to the van with only damp tights.   They went out to eat as planned; we came home as planned.  It worked out well for everyone.

First Night of AWANA

The girls started AWANA tonight.  They had to go to a new church as the old one is no longer doing AWANA.  ( They are doing something new.)   The girls were all a little nervous, but it went well.  They did see some kids from the old AWANA church.  But get this, the only kids from the old church were the old director’s kids.  WOW.  I don’t know what went on there at the old AWANA church, but I don’t think that it was a good thing.  I thought that maybe some of the kids who did not attend the old AWANA church (the ones like us who went to other churches, but went there for AWANA) would be there, but I didn’t see any.  Oh well, it looks like this church has a good program, and I think we will be pleased with it.  The kids were pointing out all the differences, but they were just differences, not better or worse just different.

The Scream

I was sitting in the front room doing math with Dearie,  Honey was there too, when we heard it.  The Scream.  It was loud.  It was long.  We all stopped and looked at each other.  I didn’t have my shoes on, so I said, “You go, I’ll get my shoes on and come.”  They were gone.  I had my sandals on in 10 sec. and was right on their heals.  We got to the backyard to find Kiddo making her way in.  She was fine, but she had fallen off of the cargo net.  She does have a big nasty bruise on her side, but no broken bones.  Sigh.  I’m glad that we have all of the stuff in the backyard, but it can make a person’s heart stop now and then.

Kiddo got a hair cut!

Dh was getting ready to go to the store earlier today.  He mentioned that he was going to get his hair cut.  I jumped at the chance and asked him to take Kiddo with him.  She has been asking for weeks to get her hair cut.  All they did was to cut it shorter, but it looks cute.  Hopefully it will be easier to take care of.

We have finished the first week of school!

We have finished our first week of school and it went well.  I had expected a rather rough start, especially for Honey, and there were some tears and a lot of “Do I HAVE to do this?” But it was not as bad as I expected, and that makes it a good week.  

Dora doesn’t start school until next week and as much as I tried not to have her here, I caved a couple of times and tried to do school with her here.  It just doesn’t work.  My girls are too distracted by her presence.  Its not that she does anything wrong, its just her being here.  Maybe I should just give her schoolwork too.  It doesn’t matter now anyway as she starts school on Mon.

On Thurs. I had to take a break from school and go mail the required forms in to the school district to notify them of our homeschooling.   This happens to me every year, I have to stop schooling so that I can tell the state that I am schooling.  Something ironic there. 

We have started using workboxes this year, and for the kids it is going well.  They get a box, do what is in it, put it back and get another one.  They each have 12 boxes and ‘Recess’ and Lunch are marked on the boxes.  When they get to those, they stop and have free time until we all start again.  This keeps us somewhat together. 

The problem that I am having with workboxes is that it is taking me way to long to fill them each night.  I am going to try something new this week to see if I can make it go a little (or even a lot) faster.  I am also trying to record what the kids do every day.  This should be a quick and simple process of marking each thing done in the program that I am using, but somehow it is anything but simple.  Maybe next week will be better.

What do I want for my birthday?

Dearie has been rather upset today.  She is upset that her sisters got cool things for their birthdays, but there was nothing that she wanted for her birthday.  After much discussion I realized that it wasn’t so much that she didn’t want anything as that there aren’t any cool things that she could have.  (Did that make sense?  She wants something but doesn’t know what.)  So I sat her down and we looked at amazon at all of the cool things that they have for older kids.  Wow, what a difference that made.  Now she is happy.  She would like a pottery wheel and a DNA kit for her birthday.  A loom might be nice too.  So right now?  She is upstairs singing DNA, DNA, DNAaaaa to her dad.  (She said, “Its the DNA song, you know like on Elmo’s World.”)  Do I even know this kid?

Water Park

We went to a small local water park last night.  I have found that by going in the evening, we not only save money, we don’t have to worry so much about sun burns.  While I was sitting in the water watching the kids play, I realized that this was something we could not have done last year or the year before.  The kids were all just too little for me to keep track of everyone.  Now that they are bigger, I don’t worry if they are out of my sight for a little while.   They had a great time!  We played in the pool, got to go under a waterfall, Honey went down a water slide, they all enjoyed the little kid area, and we had fun building castles in the sand area.  I think that I like having bigger kids.

Playing Spy

Earlier today, Dearie and Honey were yelling at Kiddo to get out of the room.  I had trouble figuring out what was going on, so I asked Dearie.  She said, “Kiddo wants to spy on us, but we want to spy on her.”  They couldn’t spy on her if she was already spying on them!

We survived Bridge camp!

Today was the last day of bridge camp.  We had a great time.  There were only 7 kids aged 9-11.   They built a lot of toothpick bridges (and hot clue), several model bridges and even a rope bridge that they could walk on.  (We took down the rope bridge in the backyard and put it up a little differently.) 

We finished the camp with a contest.  Each child could enter as many bridges as they wanted.  We weighed the bridges, and then tested them to see how much weight they would hold.  To find the most efficient bridge, we divided the weight that the bridge could hold by the weight of the bridge.   I did all of the dividing and then took everyone outside and handed out medals.  I gave rubber medals to all but the top three, telling something good about them as I did.  Then I had to go get Dearie from the house.  She was very upset that her bridge only held 4.5 pounds.  Once I got her outside, I gave the third place medal to Dora.  She entered 3 bridges and the last one that she made was a very good design. It weighed an ounce and held 15 lbs.  (efficiency=240)  Next the second place went to one of the boys from our homeschool group.  His bridge weighed 1/2 ounce and held 8 pounds. (efficiency=256)   The first place medal went to Dearie.  Dearie’s bridge only held 4.5 pounds, but it only weighed 1/4 ounce! (efficiency=288) 

It was a good week, and I am already thinking about what camp I will do next year.

Did you know that homeschooling has its own language?

Sometimes I think that we are worse than the government!  Just to show you what I mean, let me tell you what we will be using next year. 

Dearie:

SM 5B,6A and 6B  then she will go on to VT. (She averages 4-5 books a year, so this is realistic for her.)

SL LA4

SL4

Apologia GS

HWT Cursive

RS Spanish

Honey:

RS Math C

AAS

RS Spanish

HWT

SL1

MBTP

Kiddo:

SM 1B, 2A

ETC 5

RS Spanish

HWT

SL1

 

There is actually more that they are doing, but these are the things that have names that are often shortened.  So… can you name any or all of what is on the list?

Dh is healing nicely.

He is up and about more.  He still couldn’t sit at the table long enough to eat lunch, but he is no longer avoiding the stairs.  So far no infection, the most important thing.  (After Kiddo’s infected foot in the spring, I have much more respect for infections.)  It is a pain to go through, but once it heals he should not have any more trouble with it.  It has been bothering him for more than a year, so it was past time to get it taken care of.

Where’s the truck.

There must be one around here somewhere, because I am pretty sure that it ran over me. 

 

Lets just say that it has been a loooong day.  Dh is doing well, even if his wound is the grossest thing that I have ever seen.  It is an open wound.  It is not bleeding much now, but it is oozing.  I hope that it heals quickly.

Learning how to haggle.

We went to a bunch of Garage sales on Fri.  Kiddo found a doll bunk bed (just like one she has) that she really wanted.  I thought that it was priced high, and I didn’t really want her to get it so I told her to go ask the lady if they would take $1.50.  (It was marked $3.00)  I didn’t think that she would, but she must have really wanted that bed because she walked right up to the lady and asked if she would take “one dollar and fifty cents” for the bed.  The lady checked with someone else and decided that they would and Kiddo got the bed!  So now she has 2 metal doll bunk beds and one that she made out of small step stools.  I guess that her dolls are all set.

One down / one to go!

Frog camp is over.  The kids had a great time, most of them were sad that it was only four days long.  (To bad, I have my sanity to think of after all, LOL.)  Honestly though, even I had a great time.  I had forgotten how much fun a large group of kids can be.  (3 is WAY different from 17)  We had 17 for most of the week, 14 campers and 3 big kid helpers.  One of the campers got the Chicken Pox at the last min. and was not able to come.  He is at an age that puts him between Frog and Bridge camp, so he is going to come to Bridge camp. 

It did rain all day one day and I would not let the kids outside. It was wet the next day, but not raining so they did play outside, but they also did track in some mud.  Oh well!  I expected it.  I had it set up so that the kids would rotate through centers and the big kids would help them with the centers.  It worked very well, at time even I had nothing to do but walk in circles and watch what was going on.  We also did group activities and one of the favorite was watching the dissection on this site http://frog.edschool.virginia.edu/Frog2/.  We used the TV as a monitor so that all of the kids could see, but they took turns working the computer.  They also made all of the organs out of model magic as we watched.  It was better than the actual dissection!  It was hard to set up the dissection so that all of the kids could see and they got antsy pretty fast, but it was the last thing of the camp so I just sent them in the other room until we were about done, then they went outside.

 

Bridge camp starts one week from Mon. and NO I am not ready, but I will be by then.  I do pretty well thinking on my feet, sometimes it is easier to see how to do an activity when everyone is right there than to plan it ahead.  Oh, I plan and plan and plan, but I also change my plans A LOT.  Now that I have been through Frog camp, I will change some things.  Now that I know how the layout of the house works, and I think that I have a better feel for how long things will take.  I will let you know how Bridge camp goes.

Day 2 went pretty smoothly

There were more bumps and bruises yesterday as the kids became more comfortable with the backyard.  (The more comfortable they are, the more they run, and the more they fall and get hurt.)  It seems that for most of the boys, the back yard is the favorite thing.  The sad thing is that today it is raining, and it is supposed to rain all day.  I don’t think that they will be out there too much today. 

Last night I re-worked the lesson plans some since I can’t use the backyard as a filler.  I had planned a movie, that we can’t watch so instead I am going to do an on-line dissection of a frog using the TV as a monitor.  I will also have the kids make the organs out of play-dough as we work through the dissection.  That should use up a good hour.

I wish that I had only made the camp last till 3, but sometimes you just have to try it to see what works. 

PS  I dreamed about working in day-care last night.  I wonder why?

We made it through the day!

It went really, really smoothly.  I’m amazed!  The best thing I did was to have the helpers here.  They did a great job, and having them working with the kids freed me up to help where needed.  The kids did a great job listening to stories. (We had three story times!)  They spent a lot of time in the backyard, and with a backyard like ours, what’s not to love?  Most of the kids even ate their lunch on the other side of the creek.  They had a lot of stuff to take home and I think that they learned a lot (I hope so anyway).   I hope that tomorrow goes as well as today went.

T minus 55 minutes

Frog camp starts in less than an hour.  I am all set and have some time to kill (What!?!  How did that happen?) so I am sitting here on the computer.  My friend’s twins are already here and all of the kids are playing in the basement. 

The house could be cleaner, but for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I am settling for good enough.  It really is clean enough.  The upstairs is not clean, the downstairs is not clean, but the middle floor is ‘just right.’

I have a lot of activities planned and hopefully all will go smoothly.  I can’t wait!

The Beach Water Park

The girls and I went to a water park last night with some friends.  2 adults, 6 kids, we had a blast!  The girls all did some slides, but Honey is the one that loved them.  Of course, her friends loved them too and that helped.  Dearie could only be talked into going on one, and Kiddo only went on a couple.  Everyone loved the wave pool.  It is the first time any of them remember being around waves.  The heated pool was also a big hit as it was a cool evening.

Frog Camp

Frog camp starts here next week.  I couldn’t find a science camp for the kids that wasn’t basically day-care, so I created my own.  To keep it simple, it will only be four days.  To make it crazy there will be about 18 kids (15 campers and 3 ‘big kid’ helpers).  I have the week totally over-planned.  I know what we will be doing every minute.  I know that I have more planned than we can possibly do.  I know what will be left out if necessary.  The kids will learn about the habitat, life cycle and anatomy of frogs.  They will be taking home tadpoles and will be making a lot of cool frog crafts.  We are going to dissect two frogs.  Its going to be a great week, but it I think that I will be calling on my previous day-care experience to make it work.

Glasses

I now have glasses.  I must be getting old.  The eye doc says that everyone’s eyes go once they hit 40.  (Then why does Dh have better vision than me?)  My glasses are ‘just’ reading glasses, but since this is me we are talking about, it means that I have them on almost all the time.  I can see around the house with them on, but it feels really weird to walk with them on, so I put them up on top of my head.  It seems that all I do all day is put them on and take them off.   They help enough that I am willing to put up with the hassle to use them.  They make small print look like the print in Kiddo’s beginning readers!   I’ll keep using them.

Bowling!

Last night we took the girls bowling.  Its something we should do more often as the bowling alley only 10min. away.  We all had a great time!  Dearie beat us all with the whopping score of 93!  Boy am I out of practice.

I think that the girls would make great unschoolers.

Unschooling, child led learning, dumping the textbooks, all names for letting a child take charge of their education.  No its not going to totally happen here, but for these two weeks of summer that I am requiring no work from them, it is what is happening.  So far they have looked up fossils, looked for fossils, made a pillow, made a ton of bead projects, made wave bottles (oil and water), made clothes for a doll, made a house for a stuffed bunny, and talked about making a rain gauge!  All that in just two days of no school!  I can see why people un-school.  I can also see why it wouldn’t work for us.  There are some things that are work, and it is not fun to learn them, but they have to be learned.  That is why we have a schedule and a list of things to get through each year.  But summer unschooling is fun!

Bible Bowl Nationals

We are home from the National Bible Bowl competition.  We had a great time! 

Dearie’s team tied for 9th place out of more than 50 teams.  The top 8 places got medals, so they just missed that.  Dearie seems fine with it.  She knows that she is not the one who wins or looses the games for the team.  Miss E has that role, and she seems fine with it too.  I’m not sure how her parents are doing, but they will get over it.

All of the girls went and the highlight was staying in a hotel.  They all enjoyed the glass elevators, the escalators, and all the new things to see.  We stayed on the 12th floor but the hotel had 20 floors.  We went up to the top one time just to see and it was a rather dizzying experience.  I think that my favorite part was room service!  (We ordered pizza one night.) 

We all ate regular (fast) food for the trip, and the girls did great!  I ended up with a migraine, but not till we got home.  I think that I may be lightening up on their diet, but it looks like I will still have to be careful with mine.