Friday ~ The End of the Week and Begining of the Weekend!

Today was a busy but good day! Kalie and I had a relaxed school day with Math being our main (and only) subject. We spent a significant amount of time on money. Okay … really what happened was I had to make the deposit for Girl Scout cookies. I thought, humph, we will never have this much money ($992.50) in cash any other time, so lets use this to our homeschool advantage. She counted money for over an hour. She had a blast, and lucky for me she did not lose any. LOL!

Our booth sale tonight did not go well; we sold 14 boxes in 2 hours. I hope Saturday goes better. Afterwards we went out for dinner with Amy (asst. leader) and her family. Pizza Inn, the best place in town (Kalie and Hannah's opinion). Katie joined us. It was very fun. We spent more time visiting than eating.

Kasie came home for the week, she has spring break. Kalie is very excited to have a sister home! I am not sure Kasie is that excited. LOL!

Thursday ~ Plans

My plan today is (If I ever stop blogging!) to work on finishing some projects and lapbooks. Kalie likes to have "many" projects going at once. I need to have some of them finished! We did a loot of "school work" yesterday, so today can be devoted to more fun stuff. It is a delicate balance in our house. LOL!

One thing we are working on is a bookcase type of display, of the books she has read. She hates writing a reading log. So I thought why not create a "bulletin board" type display (the pre-school teacher in me coming out)? So … we created a construction paper bookshelf. Every time she reads a book she adds it to the wall. It helps with her handwriting (she hates to physically write anything) and is a visual display/reward for her.

We also need to work on her: Books of the Bible Lapbook, Counting Lapbook (that she is going to give to Scott), Artist Notebook, State Notebook, St. Patrick’s Day Lapbook, Animal Notebook, and too many other things to list. LOL!

Off to "work" … more later!

Homeschool Update

Now that I am “doing school” differently, things are much better! I have planned 180 (our state required number of school days) lessons in Math, Reading and Writing and 90 lessons in Science and Social Studies. I planned the lessons, wrote them into a new plan book (that I created) with lesson numbers not dates. When a lesson is finished I highlight the lesson number to know it is done. I do not worry about when things are done, just that they get done. So if the day is a good math day, we might get 3 to 6 math lessons done. I am keeping a journal (well I am trying to) of everything that we do that might be educational. It includes everything that is and is not required by our state. It includes Art, Bible, Music, PE, and the extra Math, Reading, Science and Social Studies that we do. I do not feel as pressured to have her “complete” what is planned. It is difficult for me because I am a more “Type A” person who loves checklists. I would love to do Abeka DVD, the textbooks and workbooks are definitely my style. Kalie is not like me at all. LOL! She is definitely a hands on, projects, let’s explore and get messy, learn by doing type of kid. It is definitely an adventure. LOL!

We are spending less time with prepared curriculum and more with an eclectic approach. It is a lot more fun for her but A LOT more work for me. I know that next year we will still do the required subjects. I am just not sure if or how it will be purchased, as we have almost abandoned our purchased stuff this year. I have lots of thinking, praying and researching to do. Wish me luck!

Wednesday ~ Stay Home Day

Wednesday was a stay home day! We had wanted to join our Learning through Books and Play - play group, but nothing was planned. It was a good day though. We did lots of school work, read lots of books, played lots of games and had lots of fun.

Tuesday ~ MMCC, Treasure Hunting and Art Class

Tuesday was a great day! We went to pre-school in the morning. Today was “G” day so we played games! They had so much fun. We broke into groups and played Boggle Jr. and Playful Patterns (a shape matching/building game). Kalie did a great job “teaching” and playing the games with the kids. We only had 6 kids (usually 9) so it was a quiet day.

Afterwards we delivered cookies to Kasie’s work (Build a Bear Workshop). Over the weekend people ordered cookies and I wanted to get rid of them before the next booth sale.

Since we were so close … we stopped at the GoodWill Clearance center (or pay by the pound GoodWill as Kalie calls it). Everything is piled onto large rolling carts and you have to dig for the treasures. If you do not have one near you, I am sorry! It is the best thing ever! Kalie LOVES it! Everything is 99 cents a pound, except for the books which are 10 cents a pound. Kalie thinks it is better than Christmas! LOL!

We buy lots of books, some to read and some to “destroy”. I will buy her old “encyclopedia” type books and let her cut out the pictures to use for projects and notebooks. We also buy lots of old school text books to cut apart, do experiments or mini lessons and use as resources. I also let Kalie get a bunch of “junky” toys since they are so cheap. She gets her fill of “kid’s meal” toys with out buying the kids meals. Then once a season we go through her toys and re-donate them (as well as other toys). They also have clothing, but we usually spend too much time looking at the other stuff that we do not have time to look at the clothes.

Well this week we both hit the jackpots! LOL! She found a collection of toys. I found practically new games (with all the pieces), books and a few household decorations. We found Battleship, Tripoley, ‘smath and 3 new sealed animal puzzles. We already had travel Battleship (from when the older girls were younger) but it was too small for Kalie to play. Tripoley is a combo game of Snap, Go Fish and War. (If anyone has this game please contact me. I need help understanding the rules.) “smath is a Scrabble type game with math equations, it looks like it might be fun (and educational, but don’t tell Kalie).

We had a great time and only spent $16.00! I felt like we were stealing, because we got a HUGE bag (bigger than a 30 gallon size trash bag) of stuff.

Then we had to rush off to Art class. Today they studied Monet. Kalie did a sunset painting. I chatted with another parent (I was able to fill my socialization need, which is usually lacking because of Kalie’s anxiety). The rest of the day we played games and read! It was a GREAT day!