Saturday, January 29- no plan
It is nearly 9pm. Today I had no plan. Lots of ideas of what I wanted to do, but I never made a list, and now it is 9pm and I feel like I've accomplished nothing. I did not even take 1 picture. As a matter of fact, I charged my camera battery last night and did not even take it off the charger today.
The kids will tell you it was the best day of their life though, and really, that is so much more important than accomplishing anything I might have on a list. We did not do anything special, had waffles for breakfast, the kids played out side (it was a beautiful day), played a game of Apples to Apples Jr. (the new favorite in our house, thanks Grammy). We did go to Office Max and get a new printer and spent some time this evening getting it set up. And I just started a load of laundry, so that's something. :)
I am off to take a bath and read for a bit, my latest guilty pleasure :)
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Friday, January 28, 2011
a week in the life, day 5
Friday, January 28th - our school day
Everyone is usually up and moving by 7am. We eat breakfast, get dressed and I try to get the kids to do their morning chores (make bed, brush hair and teeth, put away clean laundry). I admit, I've been a bit too lax lately on the chores, we are going to start picking it up again though.
When the kids are dressed, fed and chores done they can play until it is time to take Lu to Preschool (8:45am). Today was Pajama day.
We are home by 9:15am and I usually make myself a cup of tea and pull out our books for the day. Max and I work together first while Regan and Micah read in their rooms. We do math (Math U See, primer), handwriting (Cursive First) two days a week, spelling (All About Spelling, book 2) two days a week, and he reads to me, recently we've been getting easy readers from the library. He also has a Kumon book that helps him with writing his numbers. usually this takes 30-45 minutes, then he is free to go play.
Next up, Micah and I work together on Math (Math U See, Beta), Writing with Ease (book 2), First Language Lessons (3), and handwriting (Cursive First) two days a week. Depending on how much fooling around there is we can be done in 45 minutes, or 1.5 hrs.
When Micah and I are done it is Regan's turn. Math (Math U See, Gamma), Writing with Ease (book 3), First Language Lessons (3), and handwriting (Cursive First) two days a week. On a really good day when everyone is working hard and not fooling around we can finish up all the basics before lunch, but often times there are one or two subjects left to do.
Once we are done with individual work, then Regan and Micah do spelling (All about spelling 3) together two days a week. We also all do one chapter of Story of the World two days a week. The kids color one of the coloring pages from the activity guide while they listen (we have the CD's) and we go over the review questions and do the maps (also from the activity guide) together.
We try and listen to our CC review while we are in the car going to and from preschool and I use a Charlotte Mason memory box too, although we need to be more consistent with it.
We have not gotten back into French (Rosetta Stone) since starting back after Christmas break, but I am planning to figure out where to fit it in next week. We also want to start doing art one afternoon. There is lots of drawing and crafting happening organically in our home, but I would like to have something more formal. I've go Artistic Pursuits curriculum and just need to pick a day and pull it out!
Most days we are done by 1pm or so and the kids play or watch a movie in the afternoon while I catch up on email, read blogs, start dinner, and clean up a bit.
Today was a pretty typical school day for us, although Friday's are a bit lighter than the first half of the week just because it is Friday and everyone is ready to be done for the week :) Today we were done just in time to go pick up Tallulah from Preschool.
After we picked up Lu we headed to Target to pick up a couple things.
Of course I can't go to Target without getting a cherry coke and popcorn (I heart cherry coke, but only from a fountain- in a bottle or can it's regular coke for me).
And lets talk about how much I love Pizza Hut's Book It Club! Free Pizza once a month for 3 of my 5 kids?!?! Does it get any better than that?
They like it too :)
Regan is such a sweet big sister. She does not part with her money easily, but she knew how much her sister likes bubble and bought this HUGE bottle of bubbles for her at Target and then spent at least an hour blowing bubble for her Lu to chase and pop!
Tallulah was so excited! She came running in the house telling me about how Regan was playing bubbles with her and all the sweet things Regan had said to her, this face says it all!
The boys bought themselves some new ninja Legos and spent the whole afternoon playing with them.
I've been trying to squeeze in a page or two of this book every spare moment I've got. I feel like this is giving me the kick in the butt I've been needing for awhile now!
On Friday nights we head to a friends house for food and fellowship. The kids are totally fooling around during prayer in this picture!
Tonight the kids watched How To Train Your Dragon and played with their friends.
The adults (and big kids) talked and sang some worship songs. It is very informal and always good to fellowship with young and old.
This is a pretty common scene by the end of the night, Tallulah, asleep on our friends couch!
We headed home sometime after 9pm and like most Friday nights, the kids fell right to sleep.
So, after 5 days of the worlds longest blog posts ever are you totally tired of hearing about my life? I am pretty sure I would not read to the end of these post if they were on another blog. Shoot, this one is so long I don't even want to edit it!
Everyone is usually up and moving by 7am. We eat breakfast, get dressed and I try to get the kids to do their morning chores (make bed, brush hair and teeth, put away clean laundry). I admit, I've been a bit too lax lately on the chores, we are going to start picking it up again though.
When the kids are dressed, fed and chores done they can play until it is time to take Lu to Preschool (8:45am). Today was Pajama day.
We are home by 9:15am and I usually make myself a cup of tea and pull out our books for the day. Max and I work together first while Regan and Micah read in their rooms. We do math (Math U See, primer), handwriting (Cursive First) two days a week, spelling (All About Spelling, book 2) two days a week, and he reads to me, recently we've been getting easy readers from the library. He also has a Kumon book that helps him with writing his numbers. usually this takes 30-45 minutes, then he is free to go play.
Next up, Micah and I work together on Math (Math U See, Beta), Writing with Ease (book 2), First Language Lessons (3), and handwriting (Cursive First) two days a week. Depending on how much fooling around there is we can be done in 45 minutes, or 1.5 hrs.
When Micah and I are done it is Regan's turn. Math (Math U See, Gamma), Writing with Ease (book 3), First Language Lessons (3), and handwriting (Cursive First) two days a week. On a really good day when everyone is working hard and not fooling around we can finish up all the basics before lunch, but often times there are one or two subjects left to do.
Once we are done with individual work, then Regan and Micah do spelling (All about spelling 3) together two days a week. We also all do one chapter of Story of the World two days a week. The kids color one of the coloring pages from the activity guide while they listen (we have the CD's) and we go over the review questions and do the maps (also from the activity guide) together.
We try and listen to our CC review while we are in the car going to and from preschool and I use a Charlotte Mason memory box too, although we need to be more consistent with it.
We have not gotten back into French (Rosetta Stone) since starting back after Christmas break, but I am planning to figure out where to fit it in next week. We also want to start doing art one afternoon. There is lots of drawing and crafting happening organically in our home, but I would like to have something more formal. I've go Artistic Pursuits curriculum and just need to pick a day and pull it out!
Most days we are done by 1pm or so and the kids play or watch a movie in the afternoon while I catch up on email, read blogs, start dinner, and clean up a bit.
Today was a pretty typical school day for us, although Friday's are a bit lighter than the first half of the week just because it is Friday and everyone is ready to be done for the week :) Today we were done just in time to go pick up Tallulah from Preschool.
After we picked up Lu we headed to Target to pick up a couple things.
Of course I can't go to Target without getting a cherry coke and popcorn (I heart cherry coke, but only from a fountain- in a bottle or can it's regular coke for me).
And lets talk about how much I love Pizza Hut's Book It Club! Free Pizza once a month for 3 of my 5 kids?!?! Does it get any better than that?
They like it too :)
Regan is such a sweet big sister. She does not part with her money easily, but she knew how much her sister likes bubble and bought this HUGE bottle of bubbles for her at Target and then spent at least an hour blowing bubble for her Lu to chase and pop!
Tallulah was so excited! She came running in the house telling me about how Regan was playing bubbles with her and all the sweet things Regan had said to her, this face says it all!
The boys bought themselves some new ninja Legos and spent the whole afternoon playing with them.
I've been trying to squeeze in a page or two of this book every spare moment I've got. I feel like this is giving me the kick in the butt I've been needing for awhile now!
On Friday nights we head to a friends house for food and fellowship. The kids are totally fooling around during prayer in this picture!
Tonight the kids watched How To Train Your Dragon and played with their friends.
The adults (and big kids) talked and sang some worship songs. It is very informal and always good to fellowship with young and old.
This is a pretty common scene by the end of the night, Tallulah, asleep on our friends couch!
We headed home sometime after 9pm and like most Friday nights, the kids fell right to sleep.So, after 5 days of the worlds longest blog posts ever are you totally tired of hearing about my life? I am pretty sure I would not read to the end of these post if they were on another blog. Shoot, this one is so long I don't even want to edit it!
Thursday, January 27, 2011
a week in the life, day 4
Thursday, January 27- Classical Conversations
Thursdays are full days for us, although this week is a bit different since we switched bible study from Thursday to Tuesday. Anyway, the day starts early, no hitting the snooze button when the alarm goes off at 6am because it takes some serious work to get the six of us fed, dressed, lunch made and ready to walk out the door by 8:15am. It is all worth it, though, because, like most kids, they would tell you they don't like school but they LOVE CC.
So, here is our CC day (warning, there are LOTS of pictures in this post!)
6am get up and get showered
By 7am, lunch is packed...
and I am working on a brain-boosting breakfast
During our 25 minute drive to CC we review our memory work from the past 5 or 6 weeks and listen to the new history song once or twice. Once at the church we drop off Addie at the nursery and head to the sanctuary to meet with the whole Foundations group. (there are actually close to 35 families in our group, we were just a few minutes early this morning).
We have devotions (some of the kids are acting out part of The Dangerous Journey).
Say the pledge and have announcements before heading off to the different classes.
My kids are in 4 different classes, so I take turns each week rotating between the classes (except Regan's because she is too cool for me and does not want me to go to her class. :( I did get to sit in once because there were two other parents out that day). Anyway, today I was in Tallulah's class.
The board if full of all our new grammar when we get to the classroom.
They memorize a history sentence, math facts, Latin conjugations, English grammar, science facts, geography and 8 timeline cards. The memory work is new every week and there are a total of 24 weeks.
Here they are singing a song about the area of a square, rectangle, triangle and the radius and circumference of a circle, jumping to the next definition as they sing.
Time to pull out the maps!
It is amazing how much a 4 year old can understand and learn!
Today we learned about the Balkan countries (in case you are looking that closely and wondering about some of the names of the countries, we are studying the medieval period, so some of these are their former names).
Next we have snack and presentations. Here is Tallulah giving her presentation on Build-A-Bearville. The topic was geography and they were aloud to do it on a place, real or fantasy.
At this age it is really just getting them used to standing up in from of people and not so much what they say. The bigger kids spend more time planning for there presentations, but even with them it is only 3 minutes so it does not take up too much of our time during the week.
Then we had science, which I was too busy playing to take any pictures. We learned about Newtons 1st law of motion.
After Science it was on to art where we learned about Monet and did our own impressionist paintings.
The last 30 minutes is spent reviewing the material from the last 6 weeks and then we head over to the lunch room to eat, visit and play games. I was trying to capture this moment here of a group of kids age 4 to probably 14 playing boggle together, but I just couldn't get the right angle.
I love how the big kids watch out for the younger ones, one of the many blessing of homeschooling :)
At one point I was doing a headcount of my kids and couldn't find Max, then I turned around and found him playing Polly Pockets with this group of girls, lol!
We load up and head home at 1pm. Next year we will be staying until 3pm because Regan will be in the Essentials program. When we got home we spent 15 minutes cleaning out the van. It still needs the shop vac and probably a whole container of Clorox wipes, but at least there is no more dirty laundry (why was that in the car anyway?) bags and wrappers from our last drive threw meal, weeks worth of Sunday School and Preschool papers, coats, gloves, hats, colored pencils... I think you get the point).
Since we did not have to worry about cleaning up for bible study I finally let the kids decorate the gingerbread house we got on clearance post Christmas while I checked email.
I think they might have had a little too much fun :)
Don't worry, I did not let him eat that whole thing.
Things were getting a bit elevated at this point, we are talking a MAJOR sugar rush, so I kicked them all out of the house to burn off somesugar energy while I cleaned up the mess (and threw the rest of the gingerbread house away).
After I cleaned up I called my sister and chatted for awhile, then researched all in one printer/copiers online.
Addie decided that just unloading the cabinet is not enough anymore, now she's started climbing into the cabinet :)
Isn't she the cutest?
Did I mention that Addie has gotten 4 teeth in the past week?!?
Well, the kids are (almost) all in bed and I am going to watch the office and fold some laundry before hitting the sack myself!
Thursdays are full days for us, although this week is a bit different since we switched bible study from Thursday to Tuesday. Anyway, the day starts early, no hitting the snooze button when the alarm goes off at 6am because it takes some serious work to get the six of us fed, dressed, lunch made and ready to walk out the door by 8:15am. It is all worth it, though, because, like most kids, they would tell you they don't like school but they LOVE CC.
So, here is our CC day (warning, there are LOTS of pictures in this post!)
6am get up and get showered
By 7am, lunch is packed...
and I am working on a brain-boosting breakfast
During our 25 minute drive to CC we review our memory work from the past 5 or 6 weeks and listen to the new history song once or twice. Once at the church we drop off Addie at the nursery and head to the sanctuary to meet with the whole Foundations group. (there are actually close to 35 families in our group, we were just a few minutes early this morning).
We have devotions (some of the kids are acting out part of The Dangerous Journey).
Say the pledge and have announcements before heading off to the different classes.
My kids are in 4 different classes, so I take turns each week rotating between the classes (except Regan's because she is too cool for me and does not want me to go to her class. :( I did get to sit in once because there were two other parents out that day). Anyway, today I was in Tallulah's class.The board if full of all our new grammar when we get to the classroom.
They memorize a history sentence, math facts, Latin conjugations, English grammar, science facts, geography and 8 timeline cards. The memory work is new every week and there are a total of 24 weeks.
Here they are singing a song about the area of a square, rectangle, triangle and the radius and circumference of a circle, jumping to the next definition as they sing.
Time to pull out the maps!
It is amazing how much a 4 year old can understand and learn!
Today we learned about the Balkan countries (in case you are looking that closely and wondering about some of the names of the countries, we are studying the medieval period, so some of these are their former names).
Next we have snack and presentations. Here is Tallulah giving her presentation on Build-A-Bearville. The topic was geography and they were aloud to do it on a place, real or fantasy.
At this age it is really just getting them used to standing up in from of people and not so much what they say. The bigger kids spend more time planning for there presentations, but even with them it is only 3 minutes so it does not take up too much of our time during the week.Then we had science, which I was too busy playing to take any pictures. We learned about Newtons 1st law of motion.
After Science it was on to art where we learned about Monet and did our own impressionist paintings.
The last 30 minutes is spent reviewing the material from the last 6 weeks and then we head over to the lunch room to eat, visit and play games. I was trying to capture this moment here of a group of kids age 4 to probably 14 playing boggle together, but I just couldn't get the right angle.
I love how the big kids watch out for the younger ones, one of the many blessing of homeschooling :)
At one point I was doing a headcount of my kids and couldn't find Max, then I turned around and found him playing Polly Pockets with this group of girls, lol!
We load up and head home at 1pm. Next year we will be staying until 3pm because Regan will be in the Essentials program. When we got home we spent 15 minutes cleaning out the van. It still needs the shop vac and probably a whole container of Clorox wipes, but at least there is no more dirty laundry (why was that in the car anyway?) bags and wrappers from our last drive threw meal, weeks worth of Sunday School and Preschool papers, coats, gloves, hats, colored pencils... I think you get the point).
Since we did not have to worry about cleaning up for bible study I finally let the kids decorate the gingerbread house we got on clearance post Christmas while I checked email.
I think they might have had a little too much fun :)
Don't worry, I did not let him eat that whole thing.
Things were getting a bit elevated at this point, we are talking a MAJOR sugar rush, so I kicked them all out of the house to burn off some
After I cleaned up I called my sister and chatted for awhile, then researched all in one printer/copiers online.Addie decided that just unloading the cabinet is not enough anymore, now she's started climbing into the cabinet :)
Isn't she the cutest?
Did I mention that Addie has gotten 4 teeth in the past week?!?Well, the kids are (almost) all in bed and I am going to watch the office and fold some laundry before hitting the sack myself!
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
a week in the life, day 3
Wednesday, January 26, Day 3- The little things
*Disclaimer*
So, I totally slacked today and hardly took any pictures and wrote no notes, so this post might be a bit disjointed.
I started out my day trying to take note of the little things that bring a bit of joy, like stepping out of the shower and finding a hot cup of tea waiting for me on my nightstand...
or ice from the ice maker (my fridge has been in the living room for two weeks now with no water hookup).
and not having to leave my kitchen to get something from the fridge or to microwave something (and also not having to turn out all the lights in the living room to run the microwave b/c the circuit would blow if I left them on).
I know I've mentioned it before, but finding the dishwasher unloaded when it is time to clear the breakfast table makes me happy every time... it really does not take much to brighten my day :)
And here is where the disjointedness comes in- I was thinking about sharing in a bit more detail about our school day, but then I just had to share these next pictures, so maybe the school day post will be on Friday.
I was taking a load of laundry to the laundry room/playroom/pantry/boys room (aka the garage) and found this:
Seem the kids decided to try out some of the things from this book that Micah got for Christmas.
In case you are worried, Max was a willing participant.
And here they all are with their bank robbing brother. Can you see the remorse on his face?
Tomorrow is CC day, I will try and remember to take my camera with me :)
*Disclaimer*
So, I totally slacked today and hardly took any pictures and wrote no notes, so this post might be a bit disjointed.
I started out my day trying to take note of the little things that bring a bit of joy, like stepping out of the shower and finding a hot cup of tea waiting for me on my nightstand...
or ice from the ice maker (my fridge has been in the living room for two weeks now with no water hookup).
and not having to leave my kitchen to get something from the fridge or to microwave something (and also not having to turn out all the lights in the living room to run the microwave b/c the circuit would blow if I left them on).
I know I've mentioned it before, but finding the dishwasher unloaded when it is time to clear the breakfast table makes me happy every time... it really does not take much to brighten my day :)And here is where the disjointedness comes in- I was thinking about sharing in a bit more detail about our school day, but then I just had to share these next pictures, so maybe the school day post will be on Friday.
I was taking a load of laundry to the laundry room/playroom/pantry/boys room (aka the garage) and found this:
Seem the kids decided to try out some of the things from this book that Micah got for Christmas.
In case you are worried, Max was a willing participant.
And here they all are with their bank robbing brother. Can you see the remorse on his face?
Tomorrow is CC day, I will try and remember to take my camera with me :)
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
a week in the life, day 2
Tuesday, January 25th, today's theme- in the kitchen
Tuesday is the one day we don't have anywhere to go, so we sleep in a bit ( got up at 7am) and lounge a bit. It is probably the one weekday that I actually sit down and eat breakfast with the kids (baked oatmeal with sprinkled with mini chocolate chips).
While I worked with Max this morning Regan did some Valentines Day crafts.
We were able to get through school quickly today (just happened that all our lessons were short/easy) and were done with the bulk of our work around 11am.
Caught on the computer before noon.
Making lunch with the baby at my feet, English muffin pizza's.
Addie was loving this little lamb she was playing with, here she is showing me and laughing with excitement.
Used my cute new kitchen tools while I did some serious baking this afternoon. That tube of caulk in the background was just waiting for a few free moments later in the afternoon.
Hanging out in the kitchen with mom again.
I baked...
washed a lot of dishes...
and baked some more.
Yum.
While I was busy baking, the kids spent the entire afternoon drawing maps of their dream worlds.
Here is part of Regan's.
While I waited for the bread to rise I caulked and touched up the paint on the shoe molding.
Tallulah got in a little bike ride in the fading afternoon light.
We finally got our refrigerator back in the kitchen, yay!
After dinner (taco's and yellow rice) we ran around like crazy cleaning the house for bible study. In all the craziness I forgot to take pictures.
Here I am catching up on my ironing and watching the President's State of the Union Address.
I can't decide if it is my posture or the sweatshirt I am wearing, but I totally look pregnant in this picture! Maybe it was that big piece of apple pie I ate earlier... time to do some sit ups!
Oh and just for fun- between Regan and myself we took almost 100 pictures today! I think that is more than I have taken in the last month or even more!
Sorry about any typos/miss spellings- Blogger spell check is not working for some reason!
Tuesday is the one day we don't have anywhere to go, so we sleep in a bit ( got up at 7am) and lounge a bit. It is probably the one weekday that I actually sit down and eat breakfast with the kids (baked oatmeal with sprinkled with mini chocolate chips).
While I worked with Max this morning Regan did some Valentines Day crafts.
We were able to get through school quickly today (just happened that all our lessons were short/easy) and were done with the bulk of our work around 11am.
Caught on the computer before noon.
Making lunch with the baby at my feet, English muffin pizza's.
Addie was loving this little lamb she was playing with, here she is showing me and laughing with excitement.
Used my cute new kitchen tools while I did some serious baking this afternoon. That tube of caulk in the background was just waiting for a few free moments later in the afternoon.
Hanging out in the kitchen with mom again.
I baked...
washed a lot of dishes...
and baked some more.
Yum.
While I was busy baking, the kids spent the entire afternoon drawing maps of their dream worlds.
Here is part of Regan's.
While I waited for the bread to rise I caulked and touched up the paint on the shoe molding.
Tallulah got in a little bike ride in the fading afternoon light.
We finally got our refrigerator back in the kitchen, yay!
After dinner (taco's and yellow rice) we ran around like crazy cleaning the house for bible study. In all the craziness I forgot to take pictures.Here I am catching up on my ironing and watching the President's State of the Union Address.
I can't decide if it is my posture or the sweatshirt I am wearing, but I totally look pregnant in this picture! Maybe it was that big piece of apple pie I ate earlier... time to do some sit ups!Oh and just for fun- between Regan and myself we took almost 100 pictures today! I think that is more than I have taken in the last month or even more!
Sorry about any typos/miss spellings- Blogger spell check is not working for some reason!