July 1, 2012 Renovations and Homeschooling

I'm so excited, I could almost...well, y'know.  We're finally getting some rooms finished in this house after working on them for two-plus years.  I think I'll take pictures of our hall bathroom this coming week to share. Just for the fun of it, I'll dig out the before pics as well.  We still have a lot of little projects to finish up, like painting closets, a little drywall and tile patch work, painting a couple of single walls, and hanging a few lights, but we're finally wrapping it up on the interior house renovation.  WOO HOO!!!!  Of course, at this point, we could probably lose a child in the weeds that have overtaken the back yard, but we'll get to that soon enough.

We're now starting into the next phase of child rearing-school.  E and I have been dabbling a little with Sing, Spell, Read, and Write for about 5 months now, and she's now on lesson 19 of 36.  I'm amazed at how fast she's soaked it in.  She doesn't care for rote spelling exercises, so I've decided to put that off for a while.  She's now reading mid-1st grade level books with little help, and seems to remember words after having read them only a handful of times.  I figure if we focus on reading first, it will help her learn in all other subjects, even if the learning is self-directed.  I raided our local library on Thursday to stock up on homeschooling reading material.  I've been reading a book called "Homeschool Open House" that gives a glimpse into the typical day at each of 55 families' homeschools.  It's interesting to see the broad range of ways to homeschool.  Some homeschools use a scripted curriculum, some take on a thematic unit approach (where you focus learning in all subjects around a common theme), and some use a style called "unschooling" which, from my understanding, allows the student to guide learning around his or her own interests.  I have a little more studying to do to determine what route we will start out with, but I'm getting so excited to moving on to science and math, especially.

Homeschooling, etc. April 2, 2012

Like strawberry milk through the sippy cup of our son...so are the days of our lives.

A lot has happened in two years; therefore, I don't care to write the novel to describe it. :-) Still working on the house renovations. Some trim, a little paint, a couple of shelves and we're close to finishing the interior. One day, I'll have the pleasure of posting before and after pictures. A lot of backerboard, spackling, and tears (and a little blood from where Dad smashed his finger in the laundry room) have gone into this place!

Lately, we've started dabbling in the homeschool arena. I say dabbling because I still feel like we're in limbo. Not sure whether to call E a kindergartener or a first grader. I've caught a lot of grief from different people over the homeschooling decision, but it just seems to make sense for us. Why homeschool? Well thank you for asking. The main reason we've decided to start homeschooling is because of all the junk that kids are exposed to these days in public school. We could send the children to private school, but let's face it, I'm too cheap for that. After paying for a K-8 Education degree, we may as well use it! In addition, homeschooling allows us to move along at our own pace, slowing down when necessary and skipping the lessons we know the kids already have a handle on. It's hard to beat a 1:1 student to teacher ratio!

We started by just learning letter sounds and reading simple books, but then I figured it would be nice to have some kind of actual curriculum to provide a more structured framework on which to build our own curriculum. Right now, we're using the Sing, Spell, Read, and Write first grade program. E seems to be catching on very easily. I'm trying to stress fluency at this point with reading. I find the little controlled phonics books VERY boring, and I think E does also. I plan on sticking with their plan for a while to see how it goes.

To make the learning experience a little more fun, we're going to start a unit of study on birds. Tomorrow I plan on taking E to the library to pick out bird-related books. Shane thought we were going to be feeding the little stinkers that like to roost (and defecate) on our back porch. He breathed a sigh of relief when I told him I had looked up what those flying pests eat and bought seed without it. Sorry, no cracked corn, millet, or milo here! Three types of feeders will go up and we'll try to document in a journal what kind of birds come to eat. I bought thistle seeds and a sunflower seed mix today. We also have some hummingbird feeders we will put up. I'm hoping we didn't miss our little dive bombing friends!



Little A-girl is rolling over now. She rolls in no particular direction at this point, but it's obvious that the little blob stage is now coming to an end. The last couple of weeks, she's been crying when strangers or someone she hasn't seen in a while make faces at her or try to pick her up. She could sleep a little better at night, but does better than J did when he was her age. She's a pretty happy baby overall and loves when E and J give her attention. Emily loves to do her silly tongue waggling, and J makes goofy faces and likes to dangle toys for her to grab. He's been known to make her cry then try to shove the paci in to get her to stop before I notice.